A Survey on Network Security issues in Space Internet

Abstract

Space Internet, which integrates satellite communication networks, aerial networks, terrestrial networks,
and marine communication networks, has been an emerging architecture and attracted intensive
research interest during the past years. In consideration of its cooperation characteristics of
multi-layer networks, open communication environment, and time-varying topologies, Space Internet
faces many unprecedented security challenges. We provide a detailed survey of recent research
works on network security issues in Space Internet in the aspects of security threats and defense
countermeasures. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to present the state-of-the-art of
security for Space Internet, since existing surveys focused either on a certain segment or on several
segments of the integrated network. We first briefly introduce the essential background and the view
of the Space Internet, as well as discuss the related security challenges faced by the emerging integrated
network architecture. Then, we present a comprehensive review of recent research works
concerning network security issues in Space Internet, which we categorize by different research directions.
Finally, several future challenges and the respective open research topics are described.