2022-08, Burkhardt, Simon Martin, Meier, Willi, Wildfeuer, Christoph, Reezwana, Ayesha, Islam, Tanvirul, Ling, Alexander

We demonstrate a post-quantum key-exchange with the nanosatellite SpooQy-1 in low Earth orbit using Kyber-512, a lattice-based key-encapsulation mechanism and a round three finalist in the NIST PQC standardization process. Our firmware solution runs on an on-board computer that is based on the Atmel AVR32 RISC microcontroller, a widely used platform for nanosatellites. We uploaded the new firmware with a 436.2 MHz UHF link using the CubeSat Space Protocol (CSP) and performed the steps of the key exchange in several passes over Switzerland. The shared secret key generated in this experiment could potentially be used to encrypt RF links with AES-256. This implementation demonstrates the feasibility of a quantum-safe authenticated key-exchange and encryption system on SWaP constrained nanosatellites.

2014-12, Nicola, Carlo U., Knecht, Markus, Meier, Willi, Schleisiek, Klaus

MicroCore is a dual stack, Harvard architecture with three memory areas that can be accessed in parallel. One special feature of MicroCore is the possibility to define more complex Forth words by creating new CPU instructions that later can be implemented via VHDL in FPGA hardware. In our project we developed a new version of the MicroCore C-compiler based on lcc, a fully ANSI-C compliant compiler. The compiler generates from C-Code MicroCore instructions for the 1.71 version which are sent to the target hardware with the MicroForth-loader. We built in optimizations for the global stack allocations, first suggested by the group of Chris Bayley at the University of York. We tested our compiler with the BLAKE hash algorithm, implemented both in compiled MicroCore code and with BLAKE-optimized instructions directly coded in hardware via VHDL.