Compounded by the fact that advanced space communications would likely rely mostly on laser beams[1], whose efficiency and general design fits much better with

Compounded by the fact that advanced space communications would likely rely mostly on laser beams[1], whose efficiency and general design fits much better with that environment and its infrastructure. Unless pointing directly at your instrument (good luck, what are the odds?) and missed by the intended receiver, the beam will never reach you anyway. [1] Particularly if your operation is covert, discrete, observational, non-disruptive: you'd want to avoid signaling your presence in all directions, while wasting 99.99% of that energy away from your intended receiver. It's just military efficiency, a photon-VPN so to speak, that you'd need to "physically MitM" to hack.