Challenge-Response Authentication for LEO Satellite Channels: Exploiting Orbit-Specific Uniqueness

TL;DR

This paper introduces a challenge-response authentication method for LEO satellites that leverages orbit-specific observables to verify satellite identity, enhancing security against spoofing by using unpredictable, physics-based checks.

Contribution

It proposes a novel active authentication framework that uses orbital dynamics for secure, unpredictable satellite identity verification, unlike passive static methods.

Findings

Robust protection against trajectory-aware spoofing attacks.

Effective use of orbit-specific observables for authentication.

Enhanced security through unpredictable, physics-based checks.

Abstract

The number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations has grown rapidly in recent years, bringing a major change to global wireless communications. As LEO satellite links take on a growing role in critical services such as emergency communications, navigation, wide-area data collection, and military operations, keeping these links secure has become an important concern. In particular, verifying the identity of a satellite transmitter is now a basic requirement for protecting the services that rely on satellite access. In this article, we propose an active challenge-response authentication framework in which the verifier checks the satellite at randomly chosen times that are not known in advance, removing the fixed measurement window that existing passive methods expose to adversaries. The proposed framework uses the deterministic yet unpredictably sampled nature of orbital observables to establish a physics based root of trust for satellite identity authentication. This approach transforms satellite authentication from static feature matching into a spatiotemporal consistency verification problem inherently constrained by orbital dynamics, providing robust protection even against trajectory-aware spoofing attacks.