A Study of Covert Communications in Space Platforms Hosting Government Payloads

Abstract

In recent years, unmanned space vehicles have increasingly become targets of cyber-attacks. Exacerbating the problem is the desire to reduce cost and accelerate access to space by hosting government-supplied payloads on commercial space platforms. These commercially hosted payloads require stringent confidentiality protection and encryption alone is not sufficient to protect against illegal information leakage on a spacecraft with multilevel security (cross-domain) capabilities. Covert channels may still exist and be exploited by colluding entities to communicate secretly via shared resources. This report describes a preliminary study of potential covert channels in communications protocols used in satellites--specifically MIL-STD-1553B and SpaceWire.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2015
Accession Number
ADA613902

Entities

People

  • Thuy D. Nguyen

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Communication Channels
  • Communications Protocols
  • Computer Communications
  • Computer Networks
  • Cross Domain
  • Cryptography
  • Cyberattacks
  • Cybersecurity
  • Governments
  • Information Systems
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Science
  • Security
  • Space Systems
  • Spacecraft

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Cybersecurity.
  • Economics

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Cyber
  • Space
  • Space - Satellites