A sobering new study from ETH Zürich’s Center for Security Studies catalogs a dangerous convergence of warfare and orbit. Between January 2023 and July 2025, researchers recorded more than 237 cyber operations targeting space infrastructure, spanning satellites, ground stations, and linked communications networks. The Gaza conflict did not create these threats, but it amplified them, turning space into a contested domain where hackers, hacktivists, and clandestine actors rehearse a new form of warfare. The surge underscores that space is now an active frontier in modern conflict, with consequences that ripple down to everyday technologies here on Earth.
In the most alarming patterns, operations were largely rapid DoS floods aimed at space-facing portals, overwhelming systems and disrupting services. The report notes that over 70% of incidents were denial-of-service attacks—easy to deploy but capable of halting satellite tracking, command and control, and payload coordination. Beyond DoS, researchers documented data leaks, intrusions, and data breaches. A particularly striking month was October 2023, when ten attacks targeted organizations such as the Israel Space Agency and Rafael; NASA and other international bodies were drawn into the widening theatre. The study also found that while Hamas has no satellites over Gaza, some operations likely involved other actors in secret, illustrating how war in one arena can echo across space.
The study concludes that cyber operations are becoming consistent elements of modern warfare in orbit. As space assets grow in importance for navigation, communications, weather, and global commerce, defensive architectures and international cooperation must evolve. The findings imply that the actual scale of space cyber activity is likely larger than current open-source tallies suggest, demanding proactive mitigation, resilience planning, and transparent norms to deter aggression in the space domain. European and global policymakers face a urgent call to invest in space cybersecurity, coordinate incident response, and share threat intelligence to prevent cascading impacts on civil and commercial technologies.