Honestly the only thing I can think of is the competition recently to hack a satellite, maybe has drawn the ire of some script kids, or rather interest. [1][2][3] I LOT of educational and research stuff is quite open, and often very resistant to change as they value access/transmissibility over security in many cases where theres no real grounds (ie: its not national secrets etc). Some of these datasets are quite large.

Even still basic things like firewalls, key based access etc should be setupo. Heck if its a multi-million dollar instrument airgapping is probably worth its time. But i dunno. Just conjecture on my part.

The competition definately brought some attention [4]

• [1] https://www.newsweek.com/eight-teams-hackers-will-compete-breach-us-satellite-space-1808270
• [2] https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3341747/hack-a-sat-competition-highlights-on-orbit-hacking/
• [3] https://www.space.com/satellite-hacking-hack-a-sat-competition-winners
• [4] https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/08/national-intelligence-office-issues-cyber-warning-government-and-commercial-satellites/389671/