SYDNEY, Australia \u2013 States have a responsibility to inform citizens, including commercial spacecraft operators, of cyber threats, Diane Howard, former commercial space policy director for the White House National Space Council, said at the International Astronautical Congress here.<\/p>\n
\u201cStates do have a duty to warn, to share credible threat intelligence proactively and to take all effective steps to avoid the harm,\u201d Howard said Sept. 30, while presenting a paper, \u201cState Responsibility in Orbital Conflicts: Legal Implications of Cyber-Enabled Counterspace Operations under the Outer Space Treaty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to dig deeper into how to compel the states to live up to this challenge,\u201d said Howard, a University of Texas adjunct professor and principal of consulting firm sur l\u2019espace.<\/p>\n
Howard\u2019s research stemmed from her experience working in the U.S. government during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Early in the conflict, hackers targeted commercial satellite infrastructure<\/a> including Viasat\u2019s KA-SAT network and SpaceX Starlink communications satellites.<\/p>\n Since 2022, the United States military and the armed forces of many nations have grown increasingly reliant on commercial Earth observation and communications satellites<\/a>, which exposes satellite operators to the threat of becoming military targets<\/a>.<\/p>\n