> why waste that access on breaking everything in a highly-visible way when you're better off silently sitting there and using the access to eavesdrop on everything
The subtle approach takes more time.
Take the PoV of the hypothetical Russian decision maker.. you can either take all them down now with something quick & dirty while the tanks are rolling, or inject a stealthy targeted piece of malware you haven't finished yet next week after Kiev is already in the hands of a puppet government....
Yes, this was my point. I don’t believe they’ve attacked anything satellite-specific and instead just pushed an intentionally-bad configuration or firmware update to terminals in the field.
The subtle approach takes more time.
Take the PoV of the hypothetical Russian decision maker.. you can either take all them down now with something quick & dirty while the tanks are rolling, or inject a stealthy targeted piece of malware you haven't finished yet next week after Kiev is already in the hands of a puppet government....