Europe\u2019s space agency has issued a brief statement appearing to confirm reports that hackers compromised data in an incident last month.<\/p>\n
The European Space Agency (ESA) said it is \u201caware\u201d of a recent issue involving servers outside its corporate network\u00a0and has begun a forensic analysis to learn more.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur analysis so far indicates that only a very small number of external servers may have been impacted,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese servers support unclassified collaborative engineering activities within the scientific community. All relevant stakeholders have been informed, and we will provide further updates as soon as additional information becomes available.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agency \u2013 which counts the UK, Switzerland and most of Europe among its 23 member states \u2013 also said that it has \u201cimplemented measures to secure any potentially affected devices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more on space sector threats: Why Ensuring Supply Chain Security in the Space Sector is Critical<\/a><\/p>\n The news follows a BreachForums post from a threat actor claiming that they compromised the ESA on December 18.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been connecting to some of their services for about a week now and have stolen over 200GB of data. Including dumping all their private Bitbucket repositories as well,\u201d it noted.<\/p>\n The data haul includes\u00a0source code; CI\/CD pipelines; API and access tokens; confidential documents; configuration, Terraform and SQL files; and hardcoded credentials, the post claimed.<\/p>\n Xcape director, Damon Small, argued that threat actors would be able to use this information to probe for potential supply chain attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe incident highlights the inherent tension in collaborative scientific settings, where open data sharing among 23 member states often conflicts with stringent security,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cAs\u00a0space\u00a0agencies increasingly rely on distributed partnerships, vendors\u00a0and cloud services, their attack surface grows. This problem is so pervasive, in fact, that the US DoD [Department of Defense]\u00a0implemented the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification to ensure that all subcontractors are protecting controlled unclassified information.\u201d<\/p>\n The Space Threat Landscape Evolves<\/p>\n As the number of satellites in orbit continues to grow, the space technology sector is coming under the scrutiny of both threat actors and regulators.<\/p>\n