Title
Crowdsourcing security for wireless air traffic communications
Abstract
Protecting the security of the cyber-physical systems that make up the world's critical infrastructures has been a recent hotly debated topic. Legacy wireless communication infrastructure is often an impediment to quickly improving these crucial systems, as cryptographic solutions prove impossible to deploy. In this article, we propose the establishment of a separate verification layer for sensitive wireless data powered by crowdsourced sensors connected to the Internet and apply it to the aviation domain. We first validate the need for independent data verification in air traffic control networks, where all wireless communication is conducted in the clear and thus subject to manipulation. To counter this threat, we develop a comprehensive model for the verification of wireless communication based on massively distributed data collection and outline how it can be used to immediately improve the security of unprotected air traffic control networks. By combining several different methods based on the content and the physical characteristics of aircraft signals, our system is able to detect typical injection, modification and jamming attacks. We further develop a trust model to defend against potential insider threats based on compromised sensors. We illustrate our approach using the crowdsourced sensor network OpenSky, which captures large parts of civil air traffic communication around the globe. We analyse the security of our approach and show that it can quickly, cheaply, and effectively defend against even sophisticated attacks.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.23919/CYCON.2017.8240336
2017 9th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon)
Keywords
Field
DocType
critical infrastructures,wireless security,air traffic control,crowdsourcing,sensor networks,participatory sensing
Internet privacy,Wireless,Data verification,Wireless security,Cryptography,Computer security,Computer science,Crowdsourcing,Air traffic control,Computer network,Wireless sensor network,The Internet
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
2325-5366
978-1-5386-2691-7
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
15
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Martin Strohmeier116922.87
Matthew Smith253.02
Matthias Schäfer311416.20
Vincent Lenders473772.53
Ivan Martinovic593082.51