Posted: 17th June 2024

DPhil student Edd Salkield was lead author of a paper that took top honours in two categories at the European Space Agency's inaugural Security for Space Systems (3S) conference, winning both the Best Paper and Best Student Paper awards. 

The paper Security Risks of Adaptive Coding and Modulation in Space Systems was written by Edd Salkield, Drs Sebastian Köhler and Simon Birnbach, and Professor Ivan Martinovic, at the Systems Security Lab research group. It highlighted a fundamental flaw inherent in next-generation adaptive satellite communications protocols, in which radio attackers can influence the selected mode to significantly weaken the channel to wireless attacks.  

The European Space Agency conference, held in May, brought together academia and industry to focus on the security challenges that face space systems over the coming decades. The team’s paper presented an important starting point for key discussions around the requirements for more secure implementations.  

I'm very grateful for these awards, which acknowledge our paper's contribution to securing next-generation satellite infrastructure. We're pleased to have shed light on the importance of an end-to-end perspective when evaluating the security implications of novel satellite communication technologies. Edd Salkield

Edd also received an honourable mention for his participation in the Space Systems Security Challenge, which was organised in parallel with the conference. Together with Matteo Calabrese at Cornell University and Giacomo Melloni at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, he completed a number of satellite hacking challenges and only narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final round of the challenge.  

Read the full paper Security Risks of Adaptive Coding and Modulation in Space Systems at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bd0a3787-578d-4afb-9a8d-2239db7d146a