IACT Project: Impact Assessment of Cybersecurity Threats, From Theory to Realistic Flight Simulations

Abstract

Cybersecurity threats are of prime importance in the aviation context, given the widespread availability of exploitable vulnerabilities and the technological increase of attacker capabilities. There is currently a gap of knowledge on the safety impact of those threats on Commercial Air Transport (CAT) operations and Air Traffic Management (ATM). This knowledge is of upmost importance for the comprehensive development of aviation cybersecurity standards. This paper aims at analysing the impact of a specific set of aviation cybersecurity threats, namely the spoofing of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal. To this end the paper describes the results of a series of flight simulation exercises executed with actual CAT pilots using the DLR Air Vehicle Simulator (AVES), purposely enhanced to simulate the GNSS spoofing events. Such results include the feedback from the pilots and the proposed mitigation strategies for flight crews and for enhancing current crew training packages.