Threat actors may attempt to spoof the various sensor and controller data that is depended upon by various subsystems within the victim ground station. Subsystems rely on this data to perform automated tasks, process gather data, and return important information to the ground controllers. By spoofing this information, threat actors could trigger automated tasks to fire when they are not needed to, potentially causing the ground station to behave erratically. Further, the data could be processed erroneously, causing ground controllers to receive incorrect telemetry or scientific data, threatening the ground station's reliability and integrity.
This type of attack technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on the abuse of system features.