SpaceTEE: Secure and Tamper-Proof Computing in Space using CubeSats
This addresses security challenges for sensitive computations in environments vulnerable to tampering, though it is incremental as it builds on existing TEE concepts with a novel platform.
The paper tackles the problem of ensuring secure and tamper-proof computing by proposing SpaceTEE, which uses CubeSats in space to protect data from physical access, and demonstrates its application through a case study for a certificate authority.
Sensitive computation often has to be performed in a trusted execution environment (TEE), which, in turn, requires tamper-proof hardware. If the computational fabric can be tampered with, we may no longer be able to trust the correctness of the computation. We study the idea of using computational platforms in space as a means to protect data from adversarial physical access. In this paper, we propose SpaceTEE - a practical implementation of this approach using low-cost nano-satellites called CubeSats. We study the constraints of such a platform, the cost of deployment, and discuss possible applications under those constraints. As a case study, we design a hardware security module solution (called SpaceHSM) and describe how it can be used to implement a root-of-trust for a certi cate authority (CA).