Denial of service attack disrupts beam hopping in low Earth orbit satellites
JANUS: Denial-of-Service Attack Against Beam Hopping in LEO Satellite Networks
Cryptography and Security
Summary
LEO satellites change their signal coverage dynamically to match where users need it most. The authors found a way to trick this system by sending fake traffic from a small group of devices, causing the satellite to ignore real users in a certain area. This attack stops service for targeted victims for a long time by misguiding the satellite’s resource allocation. They also tested ways to reduce how well this attack works.
What this means in practice
- •For network operators: Use insights from this paper to design defenses that protect beam-hopping schedulers from traffic manipulation attacks in satellite networks.
- •For satellite system designers: Incorporate mitigation strategies when building beam-hopping schedulers to maintain robust service despite targeted traffic injection attacks.
Authors
Yuval Aviv, Roee Idan, Roy Peled, Asaf Shabtai, Yuval Elovici
Abstract
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are increasingly used to provide global connectivity. However, each satellite has limited resources that need to be allocated according to demand, which varies geographically and over time. Beam hopping addresses this challenge by dividing a satellite's service area into geographic cells. Rather than illuminating every cell simultaneously, it dynamically assigns available beams to a selected subset based on demand. This reliance on observed traffic demand as an input to beam-selection decisions creates a new attack surface whose security implications have received little attention. In this paper, we present JANUS, a novel targeted denial-of-service attack against beam-hopping systems in LEO networks. We show that a small botnet of compromised terminals can inject legitimate user traffic into carefully selected non-victim cells to manipulate the beam-hopping scheduler's view of demand. This manipulation alters beam-allocation decisions and redirects service away from the targeted victim area. We evaluate JANUS across different system configurations, schedulers, attack horizons, and attacker-knowledge settings to characterize the attack's effectiveness, required resources, and resulting service disruption over time. Against a rank-based KMAX scheduler, JANUS achieves complete service denial for up to approximately 95% of evaluated victims. Against DRL, JANUS can exclude the victim from approximately 92% of scheduling decisions. Finally, we evaluate mitigation strategies that reduce the attack effectiveness.