Novel mega-constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), including those of Starlink, OneWeb and others, will see over 100,000 satellites in space over the next several years. They will increasingly fulfill communication functions in both consumer settings and critical infrastructures. These critical functions, ranging from global navigation and positioning systems to providing phone connections, imaging data and general-purpose data links, play an ever more crucial role in modern society. The precarious place of satellite systems in the communication and navigation infrastructure naturally makes them attractive targets for cyber attacks. This was evidenced in a major attack on the ViaSat network during the initial days of the war in Ukraine and ongoing disruptions of GlobalNavigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) around the world.
The principal vulnerability of satellite systems has been known publicly since the mid-2000s due to multiple discussions at academic and hacker conferences. Despite these early warnings, recent evidence shows that the security of both legacy and novel deployments is still severely lacking. Recent publications at several major security venues generated much-renewed interest and illustrated that the same problems remain — now on a much larger scale. Clearly, many insights from the computer and network security communities have never been applied to space systems, urgently requiring action informed by research. Following other successful workshops on critical (transportation) infrastructures, we hold SpaceSec, the first academic workshop dedicated exclusively to security in the space and satellite ecosystems.
SpaceSec will bring together academic researchers, industry professionals, and government representatives to contribute to new theories, technologies, and systems for security/privacy challenges in space and on the ground. SpaceSec will be held in San Diego, CA, in conjunction with the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2024.
Deadline Clarification: Both deadlines require properly anonymized full paper submissions. The two deadlines are identical, but the first deadline leaves more time to apply for a US visa or other paperwork if required.
| First Paper Submission Deadline | 7 December 2023 (AoE) |
| Second Paper Submission Deadline | |
| Notification of Acceptance (1st Deadline) | 22 December 2023 (AoE) |
| Notification of Acceptance (2nd Deadline) | 2 February 2023 (AoE) |
| Workshop Date | 1 March 2024, 8.30am (Pacific Standard Time) |
| Camera Ready Submission | 17 March 2024 (AoE) |
The scope of SpaceSec comprises all systems that are directly or indirectly related to or dependent on space and satellite systems. More concretely, this includes the communication links (satellite – ground, satellite – satellite), the ground segment (including ground stations, systems dependent on satellite communications), and the space segment (i.e., satellites and launch vehicles) as well as all potential use cases (e.g., imaging or navigation) and dependencies of satellite applications. All space orbits are of interest, but particularly research into modern low-Earth orbit mega-constellations is invited. The workshop welcomes contributions that have a clear relevance to space and satellite systems and applications. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:
All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. The following paper types are welcome:
Short Paper: Submissions must be no longer than four pages. Short papers should provide enough context and background for the reader to understand the contribution. We envision that short papers will be preliminary work type papers, but this is not a hard requirement.
Long Paper: Submissions must be no longer than eight pages. These are typically traditional research papers.
All papers are to be submitted in double-column NDSS format. The page limits do not include bibliography and well-marked appendices, which can be up to 2 pages long for each long paper and up to 1 page long for each short paper.
Inspired by the CSET workshop, we invite the following paper categories. There is no requirement to mark them as such but we expect that extended work papers are clearly positioned and set apart against prior work:
Anonymization and the Review Process: The review process will be double-blind; all submissions should be anonymized so as not to reveal the authors’ names or affiliations during the review process.
Publication: SpaceSec24 proceedings will be published as post-conference proceedings with the Network and Distributed Systems Symposium (NDSS) 2024.
Further Notes: At least one author from every accepted paper must register for the workshop and present the paper. Fraud and dishonesty are prohibited, including: simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, and plagiarism.
SpaceSec collaborates with the CySat 2024 conference on satellite security in Paris to offer additional exposure to accepted papers. Up to five accepted papers from the SpaceSec workshop will be selected and given a chance to present their work on the CySat in Paris in person. Papers that want to participate in this selection can mark a checkbox during the submission to state their interest in participating. For each accepted and selected paper, up to two persons can present the work in Paris and will each get a free conference ticket. The in-person presentation can be either via a virtual poster or a traditional slide presentation. During the event, CySat will provide you with a high-table + chairs, and TV screen to present your work. Papers with potential technical demonstrations have increased chances of being selected and will be asked to present their demonstration live on-site in Paris.
Johannes Willbold, Ruhr University Bochum (DE), johannes.willbold@rub.de
Ivan Martinovic, University of Oxford (UK), ivan.martinovic@cs.ox.ac.uk
Knut Eckstein, European Space Agency (Europe), knut.eckstein@esa.int
Simon Birnbach, University of Oxford (UK)
Sebastian Köhler, University of Oxford (UK)
All questions about submissions should be emailed to simon.birnbach@cs.ox.ac.uk