At any given moment, a U.S. Air Force pilot may be maneuvering an aircraft mid-mission, a U.S. Navy officer resurfacing a submarine after weeks undersea, or a U.S. Army technician offloading drone data in a combat zone. Each operation depends on satellite communications (satcom) and, specifically, on cryptographic keys that allow terminals to communicate securely while keeping adversaries locked out. At the scale of modern operations, managing these keys is a technical challenge. Every terminal needs to have the right keys at the right time, quickly and securely, and if any keys are compromised, they need to be refreshed without leaving out devices that may be offline, disconnected, or under attack. MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers have now solved this challenge with the Protected Anti-Jam Tactical Satcom (PATS) Key Management System (KMS) Prototype. This new architecture enables keys to refresh rapidly across terminals dispersed worldwide, even in contested or...
learn more
