Collision-avoidance Capabilities Reduction After a Cyber-Attack to the Navigation Sensors

Abstract

The interest in autonomous navigation for surface ships has arisen over the years for both naval vessels and commercial ships. In literature, several pieces of research addressed the challenges of developing new guidance laws, stable and robust control algorithms, methodologies to increase situational awareness, and collision avoidance algorithms. Current papers base their outcome on blind trust in the information coming from navigation sensors. However, sensors can be subjected to malfunctioning, or even worse, cyber-attackers may hijack their data. This last scenario will be more and more common in the near future and represents a dangerous threat that future generation ships must face. In this work, a grey-box approach has been used to predict the outcomes of a stateof-the-art collision avoidance algorithm. Based on that, the attack consists of injecting fictitious targets as the input of the collision avoidance to force the ship to follow a predetermined and malicious track. A set of dedicated simulations using a ship simulator is carried out, and the effects of such a cyber-attack on the automatic collision avoidance system are shown. Based on the obtained results, at the end of the paper, effects on the evasive route generations are analysed and deeply discussed.

Ships without crews: IMO and UK responses to cybersecurity, technology, law and regulation of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS)

“…It may be possible to insert "a few pixels"-invisible to the human eye-which "can make an AI misidentify a stop sign for a 45 MPH sign" (Woodie, 2020). In the maritime sector, research by Longo et al (2022) has shown that they can insert radar blips and "delete existing ones, which is really nasty as a vulnerability" (Interview with computer engineering researcher, 2022). In a separate experiment, Longo demonstrated, that, knowing COLREG Rule 14-i.e., when two ships are approaching head on both ships must alter course to starboard-gives hackers a kind of "superpower."…”

“…In a separate experiment, Longo demonstrated, that, knowing COLREG Rule 14-i.e., when two ships are approaching head on both ships must alter course to starboard-gives hackers a kind of "superpower." In "97,000 computer simulations" they were able to show collision avoidance algorithms would predictably maneuver a ship to a location specified by the hackers (Longo et al, 2022). Longo and colleagues warn against "blind trust in the information coming from navigation sensors" and that "sensors can be subjected to malfunctioning, or even worse, cyber-attackers may hijack their data.…”

“…Longo and colleagues warn against "blind trust in the information coming from navigation sensors" and that "sensors can be subjected to malfunctioning, or even worse, cyber-attackers may hijack their data. This last scenario will be more and more common in the near future and represents a dangerous threat that future generation ships must face" (Longo et al, 2022).…”

On exp and log distributions in extensive and nonextensive statistical mechanics

“…For S(f ||u) ≥ 0, log(b − a) ≥ h(x), i.e., no distribution can can have greater entropy than that of the uniform distribution [11,12].…”