January 01, 2024
Rogue Space Systems' Barry 2 Orbital Robot
Much of the world’s critical infrastructure – such as communications, air transport, maritime trade, financial and other business services, weather and environmental monitoring intelligence, and defense systems – depend on the space infrastructure, including satellites, ground stations and data links at national, regional, and international levels.
The economic and data security risks associated with the greatly expanded aperture of vulnerability created by the dramatically increased dependency on cyber-based space infrastructure pose serious risks for ground-based critical infrastructure. Cyberattacks can include targeting mission packages, and attacks on the ground infrastructure.
Attacking the baseband radio interface that CubeSats rely upon has been well documented for some time. Any wireless infrastructure on an orbital platform is a large attack surface and because of its size, presents a perennial source of zero-day bugs that can lead to a malicious actor gaining complete control of a CubeSat without requiring physical access.
Current cryptographic systems require too much processing power and bandwidth, both of which are at a premium in CubeSats that weigh a little over 1kg. Meanwhile, a CubeSat can now be put into space for $100k, and Space Communications Security (COMSEC) devices can range in costs from $40k to $2M. As a result, CubeSat developers haven’t seen the need to secure their systems.
Of greater concern is the fact that the crypto-graphic certifications of US government-owned and operated COMSEC devices will expire over the next two years, and with many devices nearing the end of their useful lives, the US government is faced with an urgent and very expensive national security problem.
Designed to be both deployable and disposable, Isidore Quantum™ (IO0001-ETH/USB/WIF) provides security for data in transit and the smallest, lightest and lowest power configuration of any competing quantum-ready device available today. Isidore Quantum™ (IO5000-ETH) is also available with the latest neuromorphic processors to provide high assurance protection of voice, video and data classified TS/SCI and below at 500 Gb/s aggregate throughput and is MIL-STD-810D ruggedized to withstand the rigors of most tactical mobile environment.
Isidore works as a pair of inline network encryptors that form a routable link layer tunnel across any black fabric. The INEs are agnostic to both the red and black networks. The red namespace is invisible to the black namespace and vice versa. The trust boundary inside each INE is easy to define and evaluate. Isidore provides hardware isolation between red and black zones. The cryptography uses 2 layers of 256-bit encryption (AES GCM) with authentication, integrity checking, anti-replay, forward secrecy. The INE pair autonomously manages the session and key with periodic rekey, key recovery and zeroization.
An Isidore pair provides confidentiality, authentication and isolation for an enterprise that must traverse an untrusted network. Isidore is more than just DIT. Isidore is not IPSEC and does not need or use PKI. Isidore is quantum-ready today.
Isidore was developed using commodity/Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware and software, and a unique/patented architecture. Isidore also incorporates a patent pending Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based auto immune response system for cyber events that follows the human immune system to learn the patterns of life, detects anomalies, and mimic operator real-time analysis and problem solving.
Important Information About Isidore Quantum's Keying Methodology:
Physical and logical trust boundary with no cryptographic bypass
Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA2.0) compliant framework that leverages Crystals Kyber for key management, a PSK for authentication, and AES-256 (symmetric) encryption. Solution includes Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) with authentication (inner tunnel), and cipher feedback mode (outer tunnel)
Final key store is ephemeral, unique to the channel pair (loss of one is not the loss of another channel)
Key and channel management is autonomous to the pair (rekeying, key recovery, forward secrecy, anti-replay, dead peer detection)
Protocol, device and network agnostic
Isidore Quantum is Zero Trust by default
Isidore will enhance cyber-resiliency and autonomy of space infrastructure and introduce anti-fragility in the face of an adversarial attack (enable the platform to recover from an attack in a better state, because it has learned), trust/authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information lifecycle processes to secure global strategic and tactical communications in contested environments, and in all domains.
Isidore's first mission is Barry-2. Barry-2 is Rogue Space Systems' inaugural space flight using their advanced compute hardware, algorithms, sensor aggregation and in situ data processing.
Barry-1, is a demonstration vehicle, launching on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Once deployed to Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), Orbot, Orbital Robot, Barry-1 will test Rogue’s Scalable Compute Platform (SCP) and its ability to aggregate data from multiple sensors and process that data in real time. Additionally, Rogue will be on-orbit testing Isidore Quantum.
See below for NORAD tracking Barry-2 launch operations:
Stakeholders
Award a Phase III Sole Source Contract
A Federal Agency may enter into a Phase III SBIR/STTR agreement at any time with a Phase I OR II Awardee. A subcontract to a Federally funded prime contract may be a Phase III award.
Space Products Include:
Quantum-Resistant Encryptor for Space COMSEC
Machine Learning (M/L) Algorithms to Detect and Respond to Cyber-intrusions
Step 1 Requirements Document: Prepare a Statement of Work (SOW), Statement of Objectives (SOO), or Performance Work Statement (PWS), or use our automated tool to generate a document
Step 2 Market Research: Use this page as your market research, or view a list of other eligible projects, then request a Rough Order Magnitude (ROM) from Forward Edge-AI
Step 3 Funding: Performed by the government
Step 4 Sole Source Justification: A Memorandum for the Record is required in lieu of a J&A or SSJ
Step 5 Provide Requirements Package to Contracting Officer: Performed by the government
Step 6 Solicitation: Performed by the government
Step 7 Pre-Negotiation Memorandum: Use GSA CALC as a benchmark to determine fair and reasonableness of our ROM
Step 8: Contract Award: Performed by the government
Language for Step 4 (Determination and Finding):
Artificial Intelligence (Anomaly Detector, Deep Reinforcement Learning Agent), Counter Adversarial AI, Encryption, cybersecurity, neuromorphic processor, physics-based models, quantum resistant, Radio Frequency, SATCOM, Zero Trust
Autonomy, Command, Control, Communications (C3), CubeSat, Space COMSEC, Contested, Denied Operationally Limited (CDO-L), Telecommunications
List of Phase III contracts awarded so far
Come back soon
SBIR DATA RIGHTS:
Awarding Agency: US Air Force
Contract Numbers: FA864923P0397, FA864923P1259
Contractor Name: Forward Edge-AI, Inc.
Contractor Address: 10108 Carter Canyon, San Antonio, TX 78255
Expiration of SBIR Data: 13 September 2043
Protection Period: 20 years from award of contract on 13 September 2023
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