BiTrust: Hybrid Trust Management for Secure Data Transmission in LEO Satellite Networks

Xinghai Wei, Jie Yuan, Runshan Hu, Haiguang Wang, Xiang Liu, Dongxiao Liu, Xingwu Wang

Abstract: Due to characteristics, such as the openness and exposure of intersatellite links, low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are subject to heightened vulnerability to malicious attacks compared to ground-based networks. Given various security risks, implementing trust management in LEO satellite networks becomes imperative. However, existing trust management schemes tailored for this scenario are vulnerable to a spectrum of attacks, resulting in low detection rates and poor network performance. To address the above issues, we propose BiTrust, a hybrid trust management scheme for secure data transmission in LEO satellite networks. BiTrust introduces two distinct types of trust: 1) state trust and 2) behavior trust. State trust leverages remote attestation technology to verify the authenticity of node identities and the integrity of their functions, ensuring that nodes consistently disseminate reliable behavior trust announcements to safeguard the trust plane. Behavior trust, on the other hand, utilizes a trust model to quantify the real-time data forwarding behavior characteristics of nodes, thereby maintaining the reliability of the data plane. To precisely quantify behavior trust, we design a trust model based on multipath trust propagation. By integrating an unstable penalty term, the proposed trust model can effectively defend against dynamic dropping misbehavior. Besides, to facilitate the deployment of BiTrust in a distributed manner, we introduce a two-hop rely message mechanism and a query-answer mechanism to support the construction of behavior trust. Experimental results confirm the efficacy of BiTrust, demonstrating a significant improvement of up to 64.3% in data transmission rate under highly untrusted environments while maintaining affordable overhead.

External IDs:dblp:journals/iotj/WeiYHWLLW25