A Low-Bandwidth Encryption Protocol for AUVs

As a growing component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), MAS contribute to the prediction and monitoring of concerns with global impact, and should be viewed as a subsystem of critical infrastructure. At present, the
communication security of MAS for civilian science applications is underdeveloped within the literature. In this paper, we explore the historical reasons for this, including strict power and bandwidth constraints, and a collaborative approach to scientific MAS deployments. We describe our open-source compact lightweight encryption protocol Flatfish, which uses a hybrid-encryption
scheme and supports: one or more recipients, message authentication via an AEAD tag, and the splitting of larger messages for low bandwidth communications. We request comment and collaboration to further develop an open community standard for scientific MAS message encryption and related application areas, to increase the cybersecurity and resilience of the GOOS.