Reinforcement Learning

Institute a reinforcement learning agent that will detect anomalous events and redirect processes to proceed by ignoring malicious data/input.

Sources

https://deepsense.ai/what-is-reinforcement-learning-the-complete-guide/

NIST Rev5 Controls

D3FEND Techniques

D3FEND Artifacts

ISO 27001

A.8.16 - Monitoring activities

NASA Best Practice Guide

ESA Space Shield Mitigation

None

Related MITRE EMB3D Mitigations

No related MITRE EMB3D Mitigations

Related CSF 2.0

Related BSI Security Measures

No related BSI Security Measures

ID: CM0068

Tier: III

Onboard SV CM

Created: 2022/10/19

Last Modified: 2023/10/17

Techniques Addressed by Countermeasure

ID		Name	Description
EX-0013		Flooding	Flooding overwhelms a communication or processing path by injecting traffic at rates or patterns the system cannot comfortably absorb. In space contexts this can occur across layers: RF/optical links (continuous carriers, wideband noise, or protocol-shaped bursts); link/protocol layers (valid-looking frames at excessive cadence); application layers (command and telemetry messages that saturate parsers and queues); and internal vehicles buses where repeated messages starve critical publishers. Effects range from outright denial of service, dropped commands, lost telemetry, missed windows, to subtler corruption, such as out-of-order processing, watchdog trips, or autonomy entering protective modes due to backlogged health data. Secondary impacts include power and thermal strain as decoders, modems, or software loops spin at maximum duty, storage filling from retries, and control loops jittering when their messages are delayed. Timing matters: floods during handovers, maneuvers, or safing transitions can magnify consequences because margins are thinnest.
	.01	Valid Commands	Here the adversary saturates paths with legitimate telecommands or bus messages so the spacecraft burns scarce resources honoring them. Inputs may be innocuous (no-ops, time queries, telemetry requests) or low-risk configuration edits, but at scale they consume command handler cycles, fill queues, generate events and logs, trigger acknowledgments, and provoke downstream work in subsystems (e.g., repeated state reports, mode toggles, or file listings). On internal buses, valid actuator or housekeeping messages replayed at high rate can starve higher-priority publishers or cause control laws to chase stale stimuli. Because the traffic is syntactically correct, and often contextually plausible, the system attempts to process it rather than discard it early, increasing CPU usage, memory pressure, and power draw. Consequences include delayed or preempted legitimate operations, transient loss of commandability, and knock-on FDIR activity as deadlines slip and telemetry appears inconsistent.
	.02	Erroneous Input	In this variant, the attacker injects non-useful energy or data, noise, malformed frames, or near-valid messages, so receivers and parsers labor to acquire, decode, and reject it. At the RF layer, wideband or protocol-shaped interference drives AGC and clock recovery to hunt, elevates BER, and forces repeated acquisitions; at the link layer, frames with correct preambles but bad CRCs keep decoders busy while yielding no payload; at the application layer, malformed packets force parse/validate/deny cycles that still consume CPU and fill error logs. On internal buses, collisions or bursts of misaddressed traffic reduce effective bandwidth and reorder legitimate messages. Even though little of the injected content passes semantic checks, the effort of dealing with it crowds out real work and may trigger retransmission storms or fallback modes that further increase load. The hallmark is volumetric invalid activity, crafted to engage front ends and parsers just long enough, that degrades integrity and availability without relying on privileged or authenticated commands.

Space Threats Addressed by Countermeasure

ID	Description
SV-AV-5	Using fault management system against you. Understanding the fault response could be leveraged to get satellite in vulnerable state. Example, safe mode with crypto bypass, orbit correction maneuvers, affecting integrity of TLM to cause action from ground, or some sort of RPO to cause S/C to go into safe mode;
SV-AV-6	Complete compromise or corruption of running state
SV-AV-1	Communications system jamming resulting in denial of service and loss of availability and data integrity

Sample Requirements

SPARTA ID	Requirement	Rationale/Additional Guidance/Notes
SPR-46	The [spacecraft] shall monitor [Program‑defined telemetry points] for malicious commanding attempts and alert ground operators upon detection.{SV-AC-2,SV-IT-1,SV-DCO-1}{AC-17,AC-17(1),AC-17(10),AU-3(1),RA-10,SC-7,SC-16,SC-16(2),SC-16(3),SI-3(8),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(13),SI-4(24),SI-4(25),SI-10(6)}	Telemetry-based detection enables identification of anomalous command patterns, replay attempts, and injection attacks. Early detection allows rapid containment before mission impact escalates. Onboard monitoring is critical when ground latency limits intervention. This supports proactive defense.
SPR-55	The [spacecraft] shall provide cyber threat status to the ground segment for the Defensive Cyber Operations team, per the governing specification.{SV-DCO-1}{IR-5,PM-16,PM-16(1),RA-3(3),RA-10,SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(24),SI-7(7)}	The future space enterprises will include full-time Cyber Defense teams supporting space mission systems. Their work is currently focused on the ground segment but may eventually require specific data from the space segment for their successful operation. This requirement is a placeholder to ensure that any DCO-related requirements are taken into consideration for this document.
SPR-57	The [spacecraft] shall monitor and collect all onboard cyber- data (from multiple system components), including identification of potential attacks and information about the attack for subsequent analysis.{SV-DCO-1}{AC-6(9),AC-20,AC-20(1),AU-2,AU-12,IR-4,IR-4(1),RA-10,SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(2),SI-4(7),SI-4(24)}	The spacecraft will monitor and collect data that provides accountability of activity occurring onboard the spacecraft. Due to resource limitations on the spacecraft, analysis must be performed to determine which data is critical for retention and which can be filtered. Full system coverage of data and actions is desired as an objective; it will likely be impractical due to the resource limitations. “Cyber-relevant data” refers to all data and actions deemed necessary to support accountability and awareness of onboard cyber activities for the mission. This would include data that may indicate abnormal activities, critical configuration parameters, transmissions on onboard networks, command logging, or other such data items. This set of data items should be identified early in the system requirements and design phase. Cyber-relevant data should support the ability to assess whether abnormal events are unintended anomalies or actual cyber threats. Actual cyber threats may rarely or never occur, but non-threat anomalies occur regularly. The ability to filter out cyber threats for non-cyber threats in relevant time would provide a needed capability. Examples could include successful and unsuccessful attempts to access, modify, or delete privileges, security objects, security levels, or categories of information (e.g., classification levels).
SPR-59	The [spacecraft] shall attribute cyber attacks and identify unauthorized use of the platform by downlinking onboard cyber information to the mission ground station within [Program‑defined time ≤ 3 minutes].{SV-DCO-1,SV-IT-1,SV-IT-2}{AU-4(1),IR-4,IR-4(1),IR-4(12),IR-4(13),RA-10,SA-8(22),SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(5),SI-4(7),SI-4(12),SI-4(24)}	Rapid transmission of cyber-relevant telemetry supports near-real-time ground-based fusion and correlation with enterprise security events. Delayed reporting increases risk of adversary persistence or mission degradation. Early attribution enables containment actions before cascading effects occur. Defined timeliness ensures detection capability aligns with operational tempo.
SPR-63	The [spacecraft] shall be able to locate the onboard origin of a cyber attack and alert ground operators within [Program‑defined time ≤ 3 minutes].{SV-DCO-1}{IR-4,IR-4(1),IR-4(12),IR-4(13),RA-10,SA-8(22),SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(7),SI-4(12),SI-4(16),SI-4(24)}	The origin of any attack onboard the vehicle should be identifiable to support mitigation. At the very least, attacks from critical element (safety-critical or higher-attack surface) components should be locatable quickly so that timely action can occur.
SPR-64	The [spacecraft] shall detect and deny unauthorized outgoing communications posing a threat to the spacecraft.{SV-DCO-1}{IR-4,IR-4(1),RA-5(4),RA-10,SC-7(9),SC-7(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(4),SI-4(7),SI-4(11),SI-4(13),SI-4(24),SI-4(25)}	Outbound communications may indicate data exfiltration, covert channels, or compromised subsystem behavior. Monitoring and blocking unauthorized egress prevents leakage of mission data or cryptographic material. Many attacks rely on command-and-control or data extraction channels; egress control disrupts this persistence mechanism. Outbound traffic should be as tightly controlled as inbound command paths.
SPR-66	The [spacecraft] shall be designed and configured so that encrypted communications traffic and data is visible to on-board security monitoring tools.{SV-DCO-1}{RA-10,SA-8(21),SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(10),SI-4(13),SI-4(24),SI-4(25)}	Encryption must not blind onboard intrusion detection capabilities. Security tools require access to sufficient context (pre-encryption or post-decryption inspection points) to detect malicious patterns. Without visibility, encrypted channels become covert channels. Proper architectural placement ensures both confidentiality and detectability are preserved.
SPR-67	The [spacecraft] shall be designed and configured so that spacecraft memory can be monitored by the on-board intrusion detection/prevention capability.{SV-DCO-1}{RA-10,SA-8(21),SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(24),SI-16}	Many spacecraft attacks target memory corruption, firmware modification, or unauthorized process injection. Monitoring memory state enables detection of tampering, abnormal writes, or execution anomalies. Memory visibility supports early detection of wiper malware or boot-level compromise. This is essential for protecting deterministic flight software environments.
SPR-68	The [spacecraft] shall have on-board intrusion detection/prevention system that monitors the mission critical components or systems.{SV-AC-1,SV-AC-2,SV-MA-4}{RA-10,SC-7,SI-3,SI-3(8),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(7),SI-4(13),SI-4(24),SI-4(25),SI-10(6)}	The mission critical components or systems could be GNC/Attitude Control, C&DH, TT&C, Fault Management.
SPR-69	The [spacecraft] shall alert in the event of the audit/logging processing failures.{SV-DCO-1}{AU-5,AU-5(1),AU-5(2),SI-3,SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(7),SI-4(12),SI-4(24)}	Failure of logging mechanisms may signal active tampering or resource exhaustion attacks. Immediate alerting ensures loss of visibility does not go unnoticed. Silent failure of audit systems creates blind spots exploitable by adversaries. Monitoring the monitors is critical to resilient detection.
SPR-70	The [spacecraft] shall provide an alert immediately to [at a minimum the mission director, administrators, and security officers] when the following failure events occur: [minimally but not limited to: auditing software/hardware errors; failures in the audit capturing mechanisms; and audit storage capacity reaching 95%, 99%, and 100%] of allocated capacity, including security component failover events; alerts shall include component identity, time, and fault reason.{SV-DCO-1}{AU-5,AU-5(1),AU-5(2),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(7),SI-4(12),SI-4(24),SI-7(7)}	Intent is to have human on the ground be alerted to failures. This can be decomposed to SV to generate telemetry and to Ground to alert.
SPR-71	The [spacecraft] shall provide the capability of a cyber “black-box” to capture necessary data for cyber forensics of threat signatures and anomaly resolution when cyber attacks are detected. The [spacecraft] shall automatically route audit events to the alternate audit logging capability upon primary audit failure and shall resynchronize the alternate store to the primary upon recovery.{SV-DCO-1}{AU-5(5),AU-9(2),AU-9(3),AU-12,IR-4(12),IR-4(13),IR-5(1),SI-3,SI-3(10),SI-4,SI-4(1),SI-4(7),SI-4(24),SI-7(7)}	Similar concept of a "black box" on an aircraft where all critical information is stored for post forensic analysis. Black box can be used to record CPU utilization, GNC physical parameters, audit records, memory contents, TT&C data points, etc. The timeframe is dependent upon implementation but needs to meet the intent of the requirement. For example, 30 days may suffice.
SPR-172	The [organization] shall integrate terrestrial system audit log analysis as part of the standard anomaly resolution process to correlate any anomalous behavior in the terrestrial systems that correspond to anomalous behavior in the spacecraft.{SV-DCO-1}{AU-6(1),IR-5(1)}	Correlation across ground and space segments improves attribution accuracy. End-to-end visibility detects pivoting attacks. Integration strengthens anomaly resolution. Enterprise/Whole mission fusion enhances threat awareness.
SPR-468	The [spacecraft] shall detect and report the connection of any unauthorized or unknown component to onboard interfaces.{SV-SP-5,SV-SP-4}{PE-20,CM-8(3),SI-4}	Hardware implants pose existential mission risk. Detection of unknown components prevents covert insertion. Automated alerting reduces dwell time. Inventory integrity supports physical security.
SPR-495	The [spacecraft] shall detect impending failure of security components and initiate controlled failover to preserve confidentiality, integrity, and availability.{SV-MA-5,SV-DCO-1}{SI-4,SI-13,CP-10}	Early detection prevents cascading compromise. Controlled switchover maintains CIA properties. Structured alerting enhances situational awareness. Fault handling preserves assurance.
SPR-517	The [organization] shall correlate station/operator session activity with pass schedules and spacecraft mode, alert on off‑schedule access and command families invalid for the current mode, and retain results as audit evidence.{SV-AC-4,SV-AC-1,SV-AV-4}{AC-17,AC-17(1),SI-4,AU-6}	Off-schedule or mode-inconsistent commands signal compromise. Correlation across dimensions strengthens anomaly detection. Audit retention supports post-event review. Context validation strengthens mission assurance.
SPR-534	The [organization] shall deploy deception/canary artifacts in ground TT&C environments (e.g., decoy credentials, fake repositories, canary procedures that never propagate to flight) and integrate alerts into incident handling; mechanisms shall not induce hazardous commanding.{SV-AC-4,SV-MA-7}{IR-4,IR-4(12),SI-4}	Canary artifacts reveal credential misuse or lateral movement. Integration with incident handling accelerates response. Mechanisms must not impact flight safety. Controlled deception strengthens detection.