Addressing Cyber Security Challenges in Space Applications

In recent years, the space industry has been characterised by a substantial growth driven by both public-government agencies and also private companies. The increasing complexity of space missions, the technological improvement of instruments on board spacecraft and the emergence of new services, also based on shared systems and critical data, are having an impact on communication systems, as the increase in potential attack surfaces is significant: they must be able to transfer large amounts of data, but also they must guarantee robustness against cyber attacks by implementing the countermeasures to keep secure the data exchanged and the systems involved. The topic of cyber security in communication applications for the space field is addressed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) with recommendations which refer to the main cryptography standards from National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST). The thesis presents hardware accelerators designed to implement those algorithms, fully compliant with reference standards for AES for symmetric-key encryption and SHA for message digest calculation, useful to support the specific authenticated encryption and message authentication security services indicated in CCSDS recommendations. The digital cores proposed are optimised solutions in terms of performance and complexity trade-off, and they are designed to respond adequately to the requirements deriving from the specific application field: they represent fundamental building blocks for secure communications in next generation space missions.