Hardening Spacecraft with FPGAs

Web Sensing proposes to develop a novel cross-domain guard technology to protect NASA spacecraft, based on our existing, light-weight, 10 Gbit/sec encryption and deep packet validation capabilities. These capabilities will be enhanced by adding Synthetic Initialization Vector (SIV) mode encryption and NASA designated key-update, framing protocol, traffic payload validation, and space environment resiliency mechanisms.  The guard will be realized as a collection of reusable and composable circuit blocks that will be deployed to one or more existing spacecraft during the project. Deployment will be achieved through existing NASA tool chains that upload circuit blocks into existing onboard System-on-Chip (SoC) or Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. Acting as a “bump-in-the-wire”, the deployed blocks will then validate and encrypt outgoing traffic, while concurrently decrypting and then validating incoming traffic. Our high-performance encryption and decryption blocks, feature low FPGA-resource requirements and present a unique future proofing opportunity: they allow a broad-variety of cross-domain communication sources to be coupled and multiplexed within a single transmission medium as the range of applications and missions expands over time.  For more than a decade, Web Sensing has been a pioneering advocate of cyber resilient systems leveraging novel FPGA and SoC technologies via state-of-the-art design methodologies based on High-Level Synthesis (HLS) and Partial Reconfiguration. Our approach has continuously evolved through a progression of DARPA, USAF, and OSD cybersecurity efforts, including DARPA’s CRASH, MRC, AMP, HARDEN, SafeDocs, and HASH programs. Coupled with our expertise in space communications and building security-oriented FPGA systems, Web Sensing is uniquely qualified to conduct this effort.