1. Cyber Security of the Next Generation Air Traffic Control Systems
Mohsen Riahi Manesh and Naima Kaabouch
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA
Introduction
Problem
Methodology
More than 4000 aircraft are in the sky above the U.S. at any given time.
ADS-B broadcasts information over unencrypted datalink that makes it easy to launch attacks.
Our approach, a multi-level framework, includes a number of security methods which will detect, mitigate and countermeasure ADS-B attacks.
Jamming
Security Layers
Message Interception
We employ the concept of Swiss Cheese model which is the principle behind layered security and defense-in-depth.
Air traffic control was previously done using primary/secondary radars. But, these systems:
are slow in surveillance operation.
are about half a century old.
need costly maintenance.
Comparison of Methods
Type
Injection/
Modification
Jamming
Denial of Service Mitigation
Implementation considerations
Security provided
Lightweight PKI
Yes No
Very difficult
High
Message authentication code
Moderately simple
Moderately low
µTESLA
Moderately difficult
Multilateration
Simple
Low
Fingerprinting
Moderately high
Spread spectrum
Distance bounding
Difficult
low
Kalman filtering
Data fusion
Traffic modelling
Our proposed method
 Yes
Yes 
 Moderately simple
 Extremely high
Message Modification
In order to support air traffic control services, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated the use of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) by January 2020.
How Does ADS-B Work?
Goal and Objectives
Conclusions
References
Our proposed method takes the advantage of layered security and defense-in-depth and secure the ADS-B against different types of attack. It maintains simplicity, compatibility and scalability in its implementation.
Strohmeier, Martin, Vincent Lenders, and Ivan Martinovic. "On the security of the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast protocol." IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 17.2 (2015):
Reason, J., E. Hollnagel, and J. Paries. "Revisiting the Swiss cheese model of accidents." Journal of Clinical Engineering 27 (2006):
Riahi Manesh, M., Kaabouch, N., Reyes, H., and Hu, W. -C. A Bayesian approach to estimate and model SINR in wireless networks. Int. J. Commun. Syst., 2016, doi: /dac.3187.
This research aims to develop a comprehensive multi-level security framework to secure ADS-B data transfer between aircraft.
The following objectives will be pursued:
Investigate the ADS-B vulnerabilities and security issues
Develop techniques for attack detection
Develop countermeasures for ADSB attacks
Extensively test the proposed method using software and hardware in the loop
GPS data
GPS data
Position, velocity, identity, source, destination, etc.
Contact Us
Position, velocity, identity, source, destination, etc.
Upson Hall II Room 118
243 Centennial Drive Stop 7165