An Approach for Recovering Satellites and their Cryptographic Capabilities in the Presence of SEUs and Attacks

The problem of recovering satellites from faults or attacks, and bringing them back to an operational and safe state is crucial for satellite reliability. However, there is limited research in this area, despite the recent interest in incorporating security in satellites. This research proposes a trusted hardware module approach for recovering the satellitepsilas cryptographic capabilities after an SEU has corrupted a cryptographic key or an attack has compromised the satellite. The proposed trusted modules are estimated to consume no more than 266 mW of total power using an Altera Cyclone II FPGA. Different security levels are supported with the trusted module approach in order to meet the requirements of particular designs. Security analysis in terms of brute force attack for different types of satellite orbits is also presented. We show that the time spent in a brute force attack against the proposed system is completely independent of the computing power of an attacker, resulting in a very secure system. This research is important for addressing key recovery which is crucial for present and future satellites.