JANUS: Denial-of-Service Attack Against Beam Hopping in LEO Satellite Networks
Researchers present JANUS, a botnet-driven attack that manipulates beam-hopping schedulers in LEO satellite networks, denying service to up to 95% of victims.
JANUS is a targeted denial-of-service attack against beam-hopping systems in LEO satellite networks, exploiting the scheduler's reliance on observed traffic demand. A small botnet of compromised terminals injects legitimate-looking traffic into non-victim cells, distorting demand estimates and redirecting beams away from the victim area. Against a rank-based KMAX scheduler, JANUS achieves complete service denial for up to ~95% of evaluated victims; against a DRL scheduler, it excludes the victim from ~92% of scheduling decisions. The authors also propose mitigation strategies that reduce attack effectiveness.
- Compromised satellite terminals inflate demand in non-victim cells to manipulate beam allocation.
- Against KMAX scheduler, complete service denial achieved for ~95% of evaluated victims.
- DRL scheduler still excluded victims from ~92% of scheduling decisions.
- Attack evaluated across schedulers, horizons, and attacker-knowledge settings; mitigations proposed.
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Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are increasingly used to provide global connectivity. However, each satellite has limited resources that need to be allocated according to demand, which varies geographically and over time. Beam hopping addresses this challenge by dividing a satellite's service area into geographic cells. Rather than illuminating every cell simultaneously, it dynamically assigns available beams to a selected subset based on demand. This reliance on observed traffic demand as an input to beam-selection decisions creates a new attack surface whose security implications have received little attention. In this paper, we present JANUS, a novel targeted denial-of-service attack against beam-hopping systems in LEO networks. We show that a small botnet of compromised terminals can inject legitimate user traffic into carefully selected non-victim cells to manipulate the beam-hopping scheduler's view of demand. This manipulation alters beam-allocation decisions and redirects service away from the targeted victim area. We evaluate JANUS across different system configurations, schedulers, attack horizons, and attacker-knowledge settings to characterize the attack's effectiveness, required resources, and resulting service disruption over time. Against a rank-based KMAX scheduler, JANUS achieves complete service denial for up to approximately 95% of evaluated victims. Against DRL, JANUS can exclude the victim from approximately 92% of scheduling decisions. Finally, we evaluate mitigation strategies that reduce the attack effectiveness.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19977