Research Summaries

Back Blockchain Monitoring of System Events for Distributed Cyber Assurance

Fiscal Year 2020
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Electrical & Computer Engineering
Investigator(s) McEachen, II, John C.
Tummala, Murali
Sponsor Department of Defense Space (DoD)
Summary Blockchain is a transformative approach for leveraging consensus in distributed computational systems - in this case a large number of satellites and their respective ground stations - to provide unparalleled decentralized and redundant security. As such, this research will address the strategic objective of "Autonomous Distributed Cyber-Secure Networking and Communications" by leveraging the distributed nature of the 2035+ sponsor architecture. The research addresses the technical domains of both "Discovery Research" and "Fundamental Limits." Two primary objectives will be pursued in this research: 1) development of algorithms which use a blockchain to log satellite system events and conditions as part of the health reporting of satellites; and 2) the development of a blockchain with smart contracts to use in the detection of malicious attacks on the satellite system. Incorporating blockchain into the satellite communications infrastructure in this manner allows decentralization of the security management and removal of centralized security functions such as a certificate authority (CA). Decentralization allows more complete use of inter-satellite and mesh communications. Consequently, we anticipate at least an N log N increase in communications performance (where N is the number of nodes participating in the blockchain) in decoupling security management functions while still accounting for blockchain overhead.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal