Communications in Cryptology IACR CiC

Cryptography is Rocket Science

Analysis of BPSec

Authors

Benjamin Dowling, Britta Hale, Xisen Tian, Bhagya Wimalasiri
Benjamin Dowling ORCID
King's College London, United Kingdom
benjamin dot dowling at kcl dot ac dot uk
Britta Hale ORCID
Naval Postgraduate School, United States
britta dot hale at nps dot edu
Xisen Tian ORCID
Naval Postgraduate School, United States
xisen dot tian1 at nps dot edu
Bhagya Wimalasiri ORCID
University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
b dot m dot wimalasiri at sheffield dot ac dot uk

Abstract

Space networking has become an increasing area of development with the advent of commercial satellite networks such as those hosted by Starlink and Kuiper, and increased satellite and space presence by governments around the world. Yet, historically such network designs have not been made public, leading to limited formal cryptographic analysis of the security offered by them. One of the few public protocols used in space networking is the Bundle Protocol, which is secured by Bundle Protocol Security (BPSec), an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard. We undertake a first analysis of BPSec under its default security context, building a model of the secure channel security goals stated in the IETF standard, and note issues therein with message loss detection. We prove BPSec secure, and also provide a stronger construction, one that supports the Bundle Protocol's functionality goals while also ensuring destination awareness of missing message components.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.62056/a39qudhdj
History
Submitted: 2024-10-07
Accepted: 2024-12-03
Published: 2025-01-13
How to cite

Benjamin Dowling, Britta Hale, Xisen Tian, and Bhagya Wimalasiri, Cryptography is Rocket Science. IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 1, no. 4, Jan 13, 2025, doi: 10.62056/a39qudhdj.

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