Challenges of Implementing Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast in the Nextgen Air Traffic Management System

The Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of replacing the current Air Traffic Management (ATM) system with a new system known as NextGen. Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is the aircraft surveillance protocol currently being introduced as a part of the NextGen system deployment. The evolution of ADS-B spans more than two decades, with development focused primarily on increasing the capacity of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system and reducing operational costs. Security of the ADS-B communications network has not been a high priority, and the inherent lack of security measures in the ADS-B protocol has come under increasing scrutiny as the NextGen ADS-B implementation deadline draws near. The research conducted in this thesis summarizes the ADS-B security vulnerabilities that have been under recent study. Thereafter, we survey both the theoretical and practical efforts which have been conducted concerning these issues, and review possible security solutions. We create a classification of the ADS-B security solutions considered and provide a ranking of the potential solutions. Finally, we discuss the most compatible approaches available, given the constraints of the current ADS-B communications system and protocol

Design and Characterization of a Secure Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Prototype

During sensitive military operations, such as air operations in theater, the broadcasting of ADS-B messages poses a serious security concern, but the small message payload of ADS-B transmissions renders encryption standards such as AES unsuitable. Format-preserving encryption (FPE), a technique already in use on small message sizes such as credit card numbers, provides a suitable implementation of strong symmetric key encryption for the military context. This research proposes and details a Secure ADS-B (SADS-B) system which utilizes a bump-in-the-wire approach for encryption and decryption of ADS-B messages using FPE, going on to then characterize the prototype\u27s performance using the following metrics: detection and error rates, operational latency, and utilization of resources on the underlying field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware. Findings include sub-millisecond operational latency, full data rate throughput capability for ADS-B, and approximately 50% utilization of the available FPGA resources. Overall, findings suggest that a layered security system such as SADS-B is suitable for adding confidentiality to ADS-B

A Taxonomy Framework for Maritime Cybersecurity: A Demonstration Using the Automatic Identification System

The maritime transportation system is increasingly a target of cyber attacks. This paper describes a taxonomy that supports the creation of adversarial cyber models, risk mitigation, and resiliency plans as applied to the maritime industry, using the Automatic Identification System as a specific illustration of the approach. This method has already been applied to the aviation sector; retooling it for a maritime example demonstrates its broad applicability to the transportation sector, in general

A Taxonomy Framework for Maritime Cybersecurity: A Demonstration Using the Automatic Identification System

The maritime transportation system is increasingly a target of cyber attacks. This paper describes a taxonomy that supports the creation of adversarial cyber models, risk mitigation, and resiliency plans as applied to the maritime industry, using the Automatic Identification System as a specific illustration of the approach. This method has already been applied to the aviation sector; retooling it for a maritime example demonstrates its broad applicability to the transportation sector, in general

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan