Biblio

Today's highly interconnected and technology reliant environment places great emphasis on the need for secure cyber-physical systems. This work addresses this need by detailing a top down systems security requirements analysis approach for understanding and eliciting security requirements for a notional space system. More specifically, the System-Theoretic Process Analysis approach for Security (STPA-Sec) is used to understand and elicit systems security requirements during the conceptual stage of development. This work employs STPA-Sec in a notional space system to detail the development of functional-level security requirements, design-level engineering considerations, and architectural-level security specifications early in the system life cycle when the solution trade-space is largest rather than merely examining components and adding protections during system operation, maintenance, or sustainment. Lastly, this approach employs a holistic viewpoint which aligns with the systems and software engineering processes as detailed in ISO/IEC/IEEE 152SS and NIST SP SOO-160 Volume 1. This work seeks to advance the science of systems security by providing insight into a viable systems security requirements analysis approach which results in traceable security, safety, and resiliency requirements that can be designed-for, built-to, and verified with confidence.

NASA's next-generation space communications network will involve dynamic and autonomous services analogous to services provided by current terrestrial wireless networks. This architecture concept, known as the Space Mobile Network (SMN), is enabled by several technologies now in development. A pillar of the SMN architecture is the establishment and utilization of a continuous bidirectional control plane space link channel and a new User Initiated Service (UIS) protocol to enable more dynamic and autonomous mission operations concepts, reduced user space communications planning burden, and more efficient and effective provider network resource utilization. This paper provides preliminary results from the application of model-driven architecture methodology to develop UIS. Such an approach is necessary to ensure systematic investigation of several open questions concerning the efficiency, robustness, interoperability, scalability and security of the control plane space link and UIS protocol.

The incorporation of security mechanisms to protect spacecraft's TT&c; payload links is becoming a constant requirement in many space missions. More advanced mission concepts will allow spacecrafts to have higher levels of autonomy, which includes performing key management operations independently of control centers. This is especially beneficial to support missions operating distantly from Earth. In order to support such levels of autonomy, key agreement is one approach that allows spacecrafts to establish new cryptographic keys as they deem necessary. This work introduces an approach based on a trusted platform module that allows for key agreement to be performed with minimal computational efforts and protocol iterations. Besides, it allows for opportunistic control center reporting while avoiding man-in-the-middle and replay attacks.