Supervisor

Suitable for

Abstract

Co-supervised by Systems Security Lab

CCSDS standards describe the Space Data Link Security (SDLS) protocol for securing communications between spacecraft and ground stations for Telemetry, Tracking, and Command (TT&C). The extended procedures for this protocol detail systems for key management and security association management. This protocol has been implemented for use in NASA's Core Flight System (cFS), an open-source satellite operating system designed to run on a variety of hardware platforms. However, no consideration has been given to spacecraft shared between multiple operators, which is an emerging new model.

In this project a student would design and implement extensions to SDLS (either platform-agnostic or specific to cFS) to facilitate key management in the context of a multi-tenant spacecraft, in which the holder of a key should only be permitted access to certain components of the system. This extension could also enable support for allowing holders of different keys to access the same telemetry packets.

Students undertaking this project should be familiar with network security concepts and be comfortable writing in C.

Useful links: - NASA Core Flight System: https://github.com/nasa/cFS  - NASA CryptoLib: https://github.com/nasa/CryptoLib  - CCSDS standard for SDLS: https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/355x0b1.pdf  - CCSDS standard for SDLS-EP: https://public.ccsds.org/Lists/CCSDS%203551R1/355x1r1.pdf