Sidedish: low-cost anti-spoofing countermeasure for satellite data communications

Conference item

Satellite systems are increasingly vulnerable to spoofing attacks at the physical layer, where adversaries use inexpensive radio equipment to interfere with and replace legitimate signals. While cryptographic countermeasures are common in other wireless systems, their adoption in new space programs is slow due to concerns about the associated implications on robustness, cost, weight, power, and the challenges of updating existing systems.
    In this paper we introduce SideDish, a novel anti-spoofing countermeasure that combines a secondary receiver colocated at the satellite receiver with decoded signal comparison to detect out-of-beam unauthentic interference. The system is retrofittable into existing ground station deployments, cheap by using only low-cost components, and is robust against denial of service attacks.
    We verify this through simulations and real-world experiments that show SideDish spatially constraints attackers by between 70-99.84% in the angular domain, even considering scattering effects of the primary antenna. Targeting SideDish to deny service is not feasible within practical constraints, requiring microsecond-order timing accuracy to overcome.

Authors: Salkield, E; Ploix, L-E; Strohmeier, M; Köhler, S; Birnbach, S

• Publication status: Accepted
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Acceptance date: 2026-05-01
• Event title: 19th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
• Event location: Saarbrücken, Germany
• Event website: https://wisec26.events.cispa.de/
• Event start date: 2026-06-30
• Event end date: 2026-07-03
• DOI: 10.1145/3765613.3811684
• Language: English