Threats, Trends & Insights: October 2026

I. SPACE CYBERSECURITY GEOPOLITICS

South Korea's military pushes to create Space Command

Parliamentary audit of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: JCS Chairman Jin Young-seung says the military is preparing a plan to establish a space operations command structure, with detection systems to be linked against North Korean jamming.

Source: Seoul Economic Daily

II. SPACE CYBERSECURITY MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Airbus Defence strengthens its cybersecurity capabilities with the acquisition of Quarkslab

After obtaining the necessary approvals, Airbus Defence and Space announced in a press release issued on October 1, 2026, that it had finalized the acquisition of Quarkslab, a French company based in Paris and Rennes that specializes in cybersecurity. Founded in 2011, the company has nearly 100 employees. Already a supplier and partner of Airbus, it has been backed since 2020 by Tikehau Capital, a global alternative asset manager.

Source: Gazette du Midi

Britain poised to award £2bn military satellite deal to U.S. defence giant despite control fears

The Ministry of Defence is on the verge of awarding a contract worth up to £2bn for Britain's next-generation Skynet military satellites to American defence contractor Lockheed Martin. The new deal would replace the current British-built system produced by Airbus in the UK. Concerns that switching from domestically developed technology to a US-sourced alternative could effectively give Washington a veto over how Britain operates the system have intensified sharply.

Source: GBNews

III. SPACE CYBERSECURITY THREAT INTELLIGENCE

Swiss space firm Beyond Gravity is the target of a cyberattack

Beyond Gravity announced that it had received the first indications of malicious activity in its IT environment on August 12. The investigation is being carried out in collaboration with the Federal Office for Cyber Security and the IT security firm Mandiant.

Sources: SwissInfo, SWI

Forge the fight: 33rd RGS and 392nd CTS deliver high-fidelity cyber training ★

The 69th CYS conducts defensive cyber operations in support of Space Delta 9's orbital warfare mission. To help defenders protect critical space-domain mission terrain, the 33rd RGS team deployed a simulated environment: a high-fidelity live cyber range designed to replicate space mission engineering architectures.

Source: dvids

Russian military satellite maneuvers into targeting range of NATO reconnaissance satellite supporting Ukrainian strikes

Russian military satellite has maneuvered into an orbit that could allow it to approach a U.S.-registered commercial reconnaissance satellite providing intelligence support to Ukraine, raising concerns over the Russian Armed Forces' potential ability to threaten Western space assets. The Russian spacecraft, Cosmos 2612, has adjusted its orbit to match that of ICEYE-X36, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite operated by Finnish-founded company ICEYE, which supplies imagery to Ukraine and Western governments.

Sources: Military Watch Magazine, Kyiv Post

Space Force looks to build depth into its satellite-jamming arsenal

The U.S. Space Force needs to buy more electronic-warfare equipment than its units require for day-to-day operations so they can absorb losses in a conflict, according to the general responsible for preparing the service's forces for combat.

Source: SpaceNews

IV. SPACE CYBERSECURITY REGULATIONS

CyberInflight is proud to have developed this newly published white paper: "Impacts of New Cyber Regulations on the SATCOM Ecosystem"

Carried out within the ESA ARTES 4S Cybersecurity Makerspace initiative, CyberInflight is proud to have developed this White Paper, available for download.

Sources: CyberInflight, OHB

EU Cybersecurity Industrial Policy for Space

The paper by ECSO identifies the priority areas in which coordinated European investment is most urgently required, providing a foundation for future industrial policy discussions and initiatives in support of a secure, resilient and competitive European space ecosystem.

Source: ECSO

EU Space Act new text

The Irish Presidency circulated a consolidated compromise text (doc. 15118/26), to be presented to the Working Party on Space on 3 November. A few points are worth noticing and seem to stand out compared with the Commission proposal.

Source: Europa

V. SPACE CYBERSECURITY TECHNOLOGY

From KMS to SpaceKMS: Building a verifiable cryptographic control plane

Modern computing systems depend on cryptographic keys to determine who may sign, decrypt, authenticate, release secrets, provision infrastructure, or authorize high-value actions. A Key Management Service (KMS) is the control plane that governs those keys: where they may exist, who or what may use them, under which policies, and inside which execution environment. As cloud services, financial systems, autonomous software, and AI agents become increasingly action-oriented, KMS becomes critical infrastructure for determining when digital intent is granted cryptographic authority.

Source: SpaceComputer

Secure keys strengthen protected military satellite communications

Lincoln Laboratory's new key-management architecture solves the dilemma of how to refresh cryptographic keys securely, quickly, and widely for U.S. forces.

Source: MIT News

VI. SPACE CYBERSECURITY TRAINING, EDUCATION, AND ACADEMIC WORLD

CyberInflight in a panel at the Software Defined Space Conference 2026

The 6th "Software Defined Space Conference" (SDSC), dedicated to the critical realm of cybersecurity and software development in space, was held from 27 to 29 October in Tallinn, Estonia. CyberInflight was on a panel discussing how cybersecurity is addressed in European frameworks.

Sources: LinkedIn, SDSC, EUSPA

Space Cyber Threat Intelligence: Threat Landscape Report 2025

This paper by ETH Zurich presents evidence that cyber-threats against the space sector are growing, but the understanding of the threat landscape remains limited. Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is scarce, difficult to access, insufficiently contextualized, and often unactionable. This open-source assessment finds a landscape dominated by attacks on ground infrastructure, hacktivism, DDoS operations, ransomware, and data theft. Yet what is visible today may represent only a fraction of the cyber activity affecting space systems.

Source: ETH Zurich

Space Summit for a Resilient Future was held in Toulouse, France

A premier B2B summit organized by Novaspace with the support of the Occitanie Region, the Space Summit for a Resilient Future (SSRF) brought together a global community of decision-makers and experts from the space sector and other industries critical to resilience, including energy, telecommunications, humanitarian action and sustainable development.

Source: Space Summit for a Resilient Future

CONCLUSION

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