SaTC: CORE: Small: Building Resilience into LEO Satellite Networks by Exploiting Network Layer Characteristics

低地球轨道卫星网络作为人类社会的重要基础设施，其安全性关系重大。卫星网络可能会受到动机强烈的对手发起的过度攻击，其中一些是国家资助的，拥有潜在无限的计算和情报资源，因此严重挑战现有的安全措施，通常假设攻击者资源有限。假设这一更新的威胁模型，本项目将探索新的反制防御方法。所提工作的新颖之处在于考虑到LEO卫星系统在其网络层所拥有的固有资源，如丰富而密集的卫星连通性和高卫星移动性，开发一套物理约束而不是计算约束的安全方法，可以提高LEO卫星网络抵御攻击的弹性。该项目的更广泛意义和重要性是直接解决低轨道系统面临的安全威胁，以保护这一关键基础设施的社会和经济效益。该项目将从几个方面从根本上推进低轨道卫星网络安全研究。特别是，通过利用低轨道卫星的全球空间分布及其密集连通性和高移动性，本项目将提出基于物理约束的随机多路径路由的密钥生成方法，该方法可免受资源无约束攻击。该项目还将通过考虑隐身、间歇和选择性丢包攻击来研究对LEO网络可用性的网络攻击。为了在高机动性的恶劣星间通信环境下准确识别隐身丢包器，将开发一种新的检测方法。所有提出的方法的评估将在一个按比例缩小的面向快照的静态试验台上进行，辅以对真实LEO系统（如Starlink和OneWeb）的卫星轨道轨迹数据的计算机模拟。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Being a critical infrastructure of our society, the security of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks has a high stake. A satellite network may be subject to excessive attacks launched by strongly motivated adversaries, some of whom are state sponsored with potentially unlimited computing and intelligence resources thus seriously challenging existing security measures, quite often under the assumption that attackers are resource constrained. Assuming this updated threat model, this project will explore new counter-measure defense approaches. The novelties of proposed efforts are to take considerations of the intrinsic resources possessed by a LEO satellite system at its network layer, such as rich and dense satellite connectivity and high satellite mobility, to develop a suite of physical-constrained, rather than computation-constrained, security methods that can improve LEO satellite network’s resilience against attacks. The project's broader significance and importance are to directly address the security threats faced by LEO systems in order to protect the social and economic benefits of this critical infrastructure.This project will fundamentally advance the state of art LEO satellite network security research from several aspects. In particular, by exploiting the global spatial distribution of LEO satellites and their dense connectivity and high mobility, this project will propose physical-constrained randomized multi-path-routing-based secret key generation methods that are immune to resource-unconstrained attacks. This project will also study cyberattacks on the availability of the LEO networks by considering stealthy, intermittent, and selective packet dropping attacks. A novel detection method will be developed to accurately identify those stealthy packet droppers under harsh inter-satellite communication environment caused by the high mobility. Evaluation of all proposed methods will be performed on a scale-down snapshot-oriented static testbed, complemented by computer simulations on satellite-orbiting-trace data of real LEO systems such as Starlink and OneWeb.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.