Catz Student receives Prestigious MPLS Impact Award
St Catherine’s College is delighted to announce that Edd Salkield, Catz DPhil student in the Department of Computer Science, has been honoured with the MPLS Early Career Policy Impact Award, in recognition of his ground-breaking work on the security of satellite communications infrastructure. Edd is one of seven Mathematical, Physical, and Life Sciences Division (MPLS) students to be recognised for their outstanding research at the annual MPLS Impact Awards.
Edd identified a major vulnerability in the latest high data rate satellite communication standards, which are widely adopted by space agencies including NASA, the UK Space Agency (UKSA), and the European Space Agency (ESA). His research demonstrated that government and commercial satellite missions could be hijacked or jammed using inexpensive hardware and significantly less power than previously assumed.
Following his presentation of these findings – sponsored by ESA – to the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), urgent revisions were made to international space communications standards. These updates, ratified in November 2024, affected over 11 national space agencies and more than 140 industrial partners. The work also prompted changes within ESA, and led to revised cybersecurity guidance from ISC2, the world’s largest cybersecurity standards body.
Edd commented: “I’m honoured to receive this award, which acknowledges the contribution of my research to securing next-generation satellite infrastructure. I’m pleased to see my research shed light on the necessity of an end-to-end systems perspective when evaluating the security of next-generation communications infrastructure, and especially at the international level. We continue to work closely with the European Space Agency and CCSDS as we move forward with this critical work.”
This research, which was awarded both Best Paper and Best Student Paper at the 2024 Security for Space Systems conference, follows Edd’s earlier work on SpaceX’s Starlink user terminals. His discovery of a critical vulnerability led to a coordinated fix across one million devices.
Professor Leslie Ann Goldberg, Head of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University, said: “The vulnerabilities Edd has discovered have immediate and significant implications for the security and resilience of critical government and commercial satellite systems. The importance of these contributions is reflected in the promptness and scale of the changes made in response by the relevant bodies, including changes to international satellite communications standards adopted by all major space agencies. As acknowledged by senior technical government and industry contacts, Edd has made significant contributions to this coordinated international response, over and above the research itself, demonstrating impressive impact for a researcher at his stage.”
To read more about Edd’s research, or about his fellow honorees, please visit the dedicated landing page.