Australians are painfully familiar with the threats that abound in cyberspace but experts are warning of looming dangers posed by cyber in space.
Space-based technologies, such as GPS positioning and timing services, have become deeply ingrained in modern society, but many people are oblivious to how important and how vulnerable they are.
Increasingly, foreign powers are looking to outer space for ways to disrupt their rivals' defence, infrastructure, economic, financial and democratic processes, Flinders University cybersecurity expert Rodrigo Praino says
He poses a hypothetical scenario of a cyber attack on a telecommunications satellite during a US presidential election.
If communications were knocked out, there would be no way of determining the location of ballot boxes, undermining faith in the democratic process.
"Counting votes is not something that you directly connect to space," Professor Praino told AAP.
"But if that happened, what does that mean for democratic resilience, for faith in democratic institutions, faith in the results of the election?
"Any attack to any space asset, commercial or government-owned, can produce significant disruption in modern society."
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, they knocked out a privately-owned satellite used by the Ukrainian military.
But given the intertwined nature of space technology, the attack also disabled telecommunications in France, Italy, Greece, Poland and Hungary, as well as electricity generation assets in Germany.
Clemence Poirier, a research fellow at the European Space Policy Institute, says widespread access to space and offensive cyber tools has been a "game changer".
During the Cold War, the US and the USSR held an effective duopoly over access to space, meaning threats came from just a few nefarious actors and it was relatively easy to identify and attribute attacks.
"Right now it can be anyone," Ms Poirier said on the sidelines of the Australian Space Cyber Forum on Tuesday.
"It can be cybercriminals, it can be a student in his bedroom, it can be intelligence agencies, cyber mercenaries, state actors, non-state actors, companies, whatever."
The need for cyber vigilance has been repeatedly impressed upon policymakers in recent years following high-profile data breaches at Optus, Medibank and Latitude Financial.
The federal government has promised to release a cybersecurity strategy before the end of the year, putting the onus on companies and developers to keep Australians safe online.
But more investment in researching space-specific deterrence was needed, Ms Poirier said, with the first step raising awareness about the dire potential consequences.
"When you go to the ATM, you use satellites, when you're in your car with your GPS, you use satellites, when you order food online, you use satellites," she said.
Improving Australia's education system was essential to taking part in cyberspace, SA Defence and Space Industries Minister Susan Close said.
"The complexity of an economy is marked by how much intellectual effort is added to what we create," Ms Close told the forum in Adelaide.
"We get to add intellectual effort when we educate everybody. Not just the elite, not just some, but everybody."
