Moving target defense for a serial communications system
| DWPI Title: Serial communications system for communicating data between computing device and printer, has bus controller for broadcasting messages over bus on addresses that are derived from portions of randomized sequence |
| Abstract: A moving target defense scheme for a serial communications system is disclosed herein. A bus controller generates and broadcasts a nonce to remote terminals over a bus. The bus controller and the remote terminals generate a randomized sequence based upon the nonce and a shared secret that is shared between the bus controller and the remote terminals. The bus controller broadcasts first messages over the bus on first addresses that are derived from first portions of the randomized sequence. The remote terminals listen for the first messages that are broadcast over the bus on the first addresses. The bus controller broadcasts a shift message that causes the remote terminals to listen for second messages that are broadcast over the bus on second addresses that are derived from second portions of the randomized sequence. |
| Use: Serial communications system for communicating data between computing devices and printer. |
| Advantage: The system maintains functionality and real time operation of the serial communication system without requiring extensive reconfiguration of the system. The system improves security of the communication system by preventing an outside actor from generating coherent messages that can be broadcast along the bus even if the outside actor gained access to the bus of the communications system. |
| Novelty: The serial communications system (100) has a first remote terminal (104) and a second remote terminal (106) that generate a randomized sequence based upon a nonce and a shared secret that is shared between the remote terminals and a bus controller (102). The remote terminals listen for messages broadcast over a bus (108) by the bus controller on addresses that are derived from portions of the randomized sequence. The bus controller broadcasts the nonce over the bus to the remote terminals, and generates the randomized sequence based on the nonce and the shared secret. The bus controller broadcasts messages on the addresses derived from the portions of the randomized sequence. |
| Filed: 3/14/2019 |
| Application Number: US16353039A |
| Tech ID: SD 14759.0 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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