NASA Minds Research

This page is dedicated to my work at the NASA MUREP Innovative New Designs in Space (MINDS) project at the RecoIoT Lab. I was chosen by Dr. Mohamed El-Hadedy Aly to lead a team of undergraduate and graduate students to demonstrate the versatility of post-quantum encryption schemes in space communication.

We designed, fabricated, and deployed a simulated space mission. The contents of our work can be viewed here.

Background

Information security has been a prerequisite of recent technological and civil development, and cryptography is what allows it to happen. The constant evolution of cryptography against the relentless threat of attacks on information security is what facilitate secure exchange of information that allows for all kinds of innovations in many different areas. Space exploration is certainly no exception. To counter possible compromise of the all-important Artemis mission, it is crucial to ensure secure communications between all parties involved.

Currently, conventional cryptography is utilized to guard against attacks to information exchange. A common design of such cryptographic scheme is to rely on the so-called trapdoor functions, mathematical functions that are trivial to compute but extremely difficult to compute the inverse without some specific information, which is shared beforehand to relevant parties of the secure information exchange. Two commonly utilized trapdoor functions are multiplication of two large prime number, based on the “prime factorization problem”, the fact that it is difficult to compute the factor of the resulting product; and exponential function, based on the “discrete logarithm problem”, the fact that it is difficult to compute the integer exponent over some designated set of parameters.

In 1997, Dr. Peter W. Shor at Bell Labs proposed an algorithm to solve both problem in polynomial time, meaning that it can be done within a reasonable amount of time, with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer [1]. Due to this discovery, many commonly utilized cryptographic schemes that is based on either problem, such as Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA), Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange, and variants of DSA and DH utilizing Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), is vulnerable to attacks using quantum computer [2].

Attacks applying Shor’s Algorithm are a growing concern due to the ongoing development of quantum computers and the growing importance of information security in the digital world, making it important to devise cryptographic solutions to the attack as early as possible to allows for smooth migration from current cryptographic schemes to such solution, commonly referred to as Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). It is for this reason that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started an effort to standardize post-quantum cryptography while recommended the use of two signature schemes, eXtended Merkel Signature Scheme (XMSS) and Leighton-Micali Signature (LMS) as an interim solution before the standardization process completes and the resulting standard is widely adopted. Both signature schemes are stateful hash-based signature (HBS) that base its security on the security of the underlying hash function. With the well-understood Secure Hash Standard (SHA) series two and three as the underlying hash function, NIST were able to standardize quantum resistant signature schemes for early use [3]. The two stateful HBS utilizes Winternitz One-Time Signature (WOTS) as the underlying primitive. An HBS private key consist of multiple WOTS key pairs. Using Merkel tree construct with the leafs being the public key of the WOTS, a HBS public key can be constructed at the root of the Merkel tree. A signature consist of the identification of the WOTS used to sign the message and the hash of nodes necessary to traverse the Merkel tree from the WOTS public key leaf. This allows for the reuse of the public key for a limited number of times before needing to publish a new public key comparing to using WOTS directly [4].

With its crucial importance in space exploration, the Artemis mission simply cannot fail, which implies that of all considerations, it is necessary to ensure adversaries cannot compromise the digital communications necessary to the mission’s success. There is no guarantee that interested parties with sufficient resources, such as nation-state actors, will not develop quantum computers capable of compromising the communication between the mission control and the field operation. Therefore, a quantum resistant layer needs to be incorporated into the communications in the missions.

Project Overview

The objective is to transmit post-quantum secure commands from a PC to a mobile unmanned ground vehicle with a mounted Raspberry Pi module. This UGV will send the encrypted message to a second UGV and wait for verification confirmation. Then, it will execute the command by driving the pathway drawn by the user. But how does this relate NASA’s Artemis project? According to NASA’s The Artemis Plan on Page 9 they mention that within 4 years we are sending people to land on the moon as a feat for humanity to expand their vast pool of knowledge in the areas of technology development, engineering, exploration and more [5]. This means a tough challenge is to approach both the NASA team and the crew. The environment is sure to not be friendly and will push humanity into an age of unknown discovery. Because NASA plans on landing on the Moon and Mars within Artemis 2 and 3, Some other goals proposed for the project include the ability to traverse the tough environments on such celestial bodies. Thus, Mecanum wheels were a great inclusion that allow for the traversal of such terrain. The project also elicited the usage of bumpers to stop/inhibit the damage that come from crashing when moving faster on the moon. These UGVs represent collaborative robots in deep space with reliable secure communication. From NASA’s own word, The Artemis Project, they are launching a bunch of cube satellites that will accrue the engagement of universities and experts that want to study outer space [5]. Since Artemis may be a multi-decade mission, the need for post-quantum security will inevitably arise. With the success of this project, future rovers will transmit information like geographical mapping of Mars through a secure channel back to Earth. Our success will prove useful during the execution of Artemis Phase 1 (establishment on the moon) and during Phase 2 (Mars exploration). NASA will securely encrypt continuous and large amounts of data from their rovers.

REFERENCES

[1] P. W. Shor, Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and Discrete Logarithms on a Quantum Computer, vol. 41, 1999, pp. 303-332. [2] M. Roetteler, M. Naehrig, K. M. Svore and K. Lauter, “Quantum resource estimates for computing elliptic curve discrete logarithms,” 2017. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06752. [3] D. A. Cooper, D. C. Apon, Q. H. Dang, M. S. Davidson, M. J. Dworkin and C. A. Miller, “Recommendation for Stateful Hash-Based Signature Schemes,” Gaithersburg, MD, 2020. [4] T. G. Tan, P. Szalachowski and J. Zhou, “Challenges of Post-Quantum Digital Signing in Real-world Applications: A Survey,” 2019. [Online] [5] National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “NASA,” September 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/artemis_plan-20200921.pdf. [Accessed 20 March 2022].

Topics Covered: encryption, quantum cryptography, CAD, analog circuit design, embedded software, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, IoT

Note This page will be updated soon with more information and relevant content.