Hacking Space to Defend It: Generating IoBs with SPARTA
Brandon Bailey
DEF CON 33 (backfill) · Day 1 · Main Stage
In an increasingly space-dependent world, securing orbital assets against cyber threats is paramount. Brandon Bailey's DEF CON talk, "Hacking Space to Defend It: Generating IoBs with SPARTA," addresses this critical challenge by introducing a groundbreaking methodology for developing robust intrusion detection capabilities for spacecraft. The presentation centers on the **Space Attack Research and Tactic Analysis (SPARTA)** framework, an adaptation of MITRE ATT&CK tailored for space systems, and its novel extension: **Indicators of Behavior (IoBs)**.
AI review
Bailey brings something genuinely niche and underexplored to DEF CON: a structured, MITRE-derived threat framework for spacecraft with working detection tooling and live demos against a real CubeSat digital twin. The autonomous response argument isn't just hand-waving — it's grounded in the actual physics of orbital communication latency, and the AI-assisted IoB-to-mnemonic mapping addresses the single most credible objection to adoption at scale.