Mil/Aero is undergoing a sea change as stand-alone embedded devices migrate to net-centric COTS devices, boards and systems, which calls for commercial security software that can keep pace.
Applications for COTS-based security software include everything from securing the end-points for peer-to-peer, client-to-server network communication to providing a secure interactive session for mobile operator over network. Others include packet-based tactical radios, secure machine-to-machine session, data transmission and file transfer; encryption of data in-flight and bulk-encryption of data at-rest for fixed and removable file systems.
SSL and SSH use well-proven asymmetric and symmetric encryption and hash algorithms, including AES, RSA, DSS, 3DES, Blowfish, SHA-1 to SHA-512 and X.509. These mission-critical algorithms establish a strong security model for in-flight and at-rest applications, and are well matched to COTS hardware and embedded operating systems.
An example SSH development platform is Cypherbridge’s uSSH Embedded SSH Server. This portable ANSI C SSH server lets developers implement secure interactive shell and SSH tunneled application functions using the uSSH solution. The server provides a secure telnet replacement and boasts a flexible TCP/IP security layer for existing and new applications using the built-in command dispatcher. The software is easy to integrate with run-time environment using RTOS integration features.
The uSSH SDK can be complied for a range of processors and platforms, and comes equipped with utilities and toolkits to manage user accounts and private keys. Build options include tailored asymmetric and symmetric crypto suite, login banner, account access control and other features. The compact uSSH protocols and fully integrated math and crypto library can be tailored to a very compact memory footprint under 50K on a typical Cortex-M3 flash MCU.