I’ll be focusing on satellite cybersecurity research, particularly at the intersection of flight software and system-level security.

Looking forward to building, researching, and contributing in this space.

I presented my work on satellite cybersecurity “Silent Subversion” and got the chance to share ideas, get feedback, and meet a ton of great people working in space and security.

Super motivating experience—came back with new ideas, new connections, and a lot of energy to keep pushing forward!

Background

Spacecraft depend entirely on remote telemetry to understand their state.
If that telemetry is falsified, operators can be misled into making mission-ending decisions.
While past research has explored ground-based spoofing (e.g., falsified uplinks or radio jamming), Silent Subversion exposes a deeper, internal threat — onboard spoofing originating from compromised supply-chain components.

Implementation

The paper presents the first end-to-end simulation of an internal sensor-spoofing implant within NASA’s NOS3 satellite environment.
A malicious cFS component, SOLO, masquerades as a legitimate star tracker, publishing schema-valid telemetry packets that mimic real sensor cadence and formatting.
Using standard cFS message identifiers and bus APIs, SOLO passes integration, survives pre-launch testing, and replaces genuine telemetry during flight simulation.

Two deception modes were demonstrated:

• Bias Mode – Injects small, drift-like perturbations that gradually bias estimation without triggering alarms.
• Replacement Mode – Disables the genuine sensor and transmits falsified data indistinguishable from the real stream.

Both modes were accepted as legitimate by COSMOS, confirming that spoofed telemetry can deceive ground operators and onboard estimators alike.

Findings

Silent Subversion highlights three systemic weaknesses:

1. Implicit trust in telemetry — packets are accepted if structurally valid.
2. Lack of runtime monitoring — no verification of message provenance.
3. Opaque supply chains — vendor modules integrate as black boxes with full privileges.

These weaknesses allow internal spoofing to compromise both integrity and availability, echoing industrial control-system attacks like Stuxnet but transposed to orbital platforms.

Countermeasures

The study maps realistic mitigations to MITRE SPARTA EX-0014.03 (Sensor Data Spoofing):

• Authenticated telemetry and lightweight bus encryption to verify data origin.
• On-board anomaly detection to flag suspicious message rates.
• Cross-sensor verification before activating safe-mode responses.
• Model-based validation comparing telemetry to physical consistency checks.

Reflection

Where SpyChain demonstrated covert exfiltration, Silent Subversion focuses on deceptive integrity loss—showing how trusted components can falsify reality itself.
Together, these works reveal that modern small satellites face not only denial and disruption, but silent manipulation from within their own supply chains.
Ongoing research will extend these results toward hardware-in-the-loop verification and automated countermeasure testing inside NOS3.

Up for submission!

Background

Modern CubeSats rely on modular software architectures—particularly NASA’s Core Flight System (cFS)—that allow plug-and-play integration of third-party components.
While this modularity accelerates development, it also expands the attack surface. SpyChain explores how vendor-supplied modules could be compromised to act maliciously once integrated into flight software.

Implementation

SpyChain was implemented in NOS3, a high-fidelity satellite simulation that mirrors real spacecraft behavior through simulated hardware models, cFS applications, and COSMOS ground-station tools.
Each malicious component followed the legitimate cFS lifecycle, passing integration and operating invisibly under nominal conditions.
Two agents were developed:

• Trigger Agent — monitored GNSS telemetry to determine orbital insertion, activating malicious behavior only under mission-relevant conditions.
• Attack Agent — established covert communication using a FIFO file and exfiltrated telemetry via the legitimate radio UDP socket, bypassing detection by ground operators.

This design preserved structural fidelity to real CubeSat operations while allowing reproducible testing in a safe, simulated environment.

Results

Across five experimental scenarios, SpyChain demonstrated:

1. Coordinated communication between colluding components without operator awareness.
2. Telemetry exfiltration through legitimate radio channels, indistinguishable from normal downlink traffic.
3. Deceptive diagnostics capable of misleading ground operators and masking real faults.
4. Stealth and persistence, with the malware blending seamlessly into expected mission behavior.

Scenario 5 achieved complete stealth by replacing visible software-bus communication with a covert file channel—proving that supply-chain malware can persist undetected throughout pre-launch testing and on-orbit operations.

Countermeasures

Our results emphasize the urgent need for runtime monitoring, software-bus access control, and system-call filtering (e.g., via seccomp) to limit covert behaviors in flight software.
SpyChain’s insights have already contributed to the SPARTA matrix through a new defense-evasion technique, Component Collusion (DE-0012), formalizing this previously unrecognized threat vector.

Reflection

Completing SpyChain marked a milestone in my small-satellite cybersecurity research.
It bridges theory and practice—transforming abstract supply-chain concerns into measurable, reproducible behaviors within NASA’s open simulation ecosystem.
By sharing this work publicly, the project aims to foster stronger collaboration between academia, NASA, and the wider aerospace community to secure the next generation of modular satellite systems.

arXiv preprint: arXiv:2510.06535

This milestone marks the completion of years of study, collaboration, and exploration across topics ranging from systems programming and cybersecurity to simulation, AI, and space systems engineering.
Throughout my undergraduate experience, I developed a strong foundation in both theory and application — working on research that combined software security with NASA’s small-satellite simulation environments, and contributing to projects that bridged computer science with real-world mission contexts.

Beyond academics, my time at UNM taught me the value of persistence, mentorship, and curiosity-driven learning.
I’m deeply grateful to my professors, mentors, and peers who made this journey possible — and excited to carry these experiences forward into graduate research and beyond.

This milestone represents the next step in my journey toward specializing in cybersecurity and space systems engineering.
During my undergraduate studies, I discovered a strong passion for the intersection of software, security, and aerospace technology — interests I plan to continue exploring through advanced research and hands-on simulation work.

At UNM, I’ll be joining an environment that fosters collaboration across disciplines, with opportunities to work alongside NASA IV&V and the state’s growing space technology community.
My goals include contributing to research on secure satellite software architectures, publishing in leading cybersecurity conferences, and mentoring undergraduates interested in applied systems security.

Excited, grateful, and ready for the challenges ahead.