In the Same Boat: On Small Satellites, Big Rockets, and Cyber Trust

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) is a key air surveillance technology and a critical component of next-generation air transportation systems. It significantly simplifies aircraft surveillance technology and improves airborne traffic situational awareness. Many types of mobile cockpit information systems (MCISs) are based on ADS-B technology. MCIS gives pilots the flight and trafficrelated information they need. MCIS has two parts: an ADS-B transceiver and an electronic flight bag (EFB) application. The ADS-B transceivers transmit and receive the ADS-B radio signals while the EFB applications hosted on mobile phones display the data. Because they are cheap, lightweight, and easy to install, MCISs became very popular. However, due to the lack of basic security measures, ADS-B technology is vulnerable to cyberattacks, which makes the MCIS inherently exposed to attacks. Attacks are even more likely for the MCIS, because they are power, memory, and computationally constrained. This study explores the cybersecurity posture of various MCIS setups for both types of ADS-B technology: 1090ES and UAT978. Total six portable MCIS devices and 21 EFB applications were tested against radio-link-based attacks by transmission-capable software-defined radio (SDR). Packet-level denial of service (DoS) attacks affected approximately 63% and 37% of 1090ES and UAT978 setups, respectively, while many of them experienced a system crash. Our experiments show that DoS attacks on the reception could meaningfully reduce transmission capacity. Our coordinated attack and fuzz tests also reported worrying issues on the MCIS. The consistency of our results on a very broad range of hardware and software configurations indicate the reliability of our proposed methodology as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of our platform.

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“…VOLUME 10, 2022 [43] could increase the attack sphere and severely amplify the potential impact of attacks [44].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the (In)Security of 1090ES and UAT978 Mobile Cockpit Information Systems–An Attacker Perspective on the Availability of ADS-B Safety- and Mission-Critical Systems

Khandker¹,

Turtiainen²,

Costin³

et al. 2022

IEEE Access

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“…Licenses for space operation give strict frequency bands and operating parameters for satellites. As identified in [26], a satellite developer must provide a transmitter survey and potentially verification of emission characteristics, however these mostly rely on a benign satellite operator providing trustworthy data [6], [21]. The adversarial analysis done by Pavur et al shows that physical changes are limited by size and power, but software is extremely difficult to completely externally verify without a detailed code review, which is currently not required for all commercial launches.…”

Section: B Sdrs In Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Death By A Thousand COTS: Disrupting Satellite Communications using Low Earth Orbit Constellations

Rawlins,

Baker,

Martinovic

2023

Proceedings 2023 Workshop on Security of Space and Satellite Systems

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Satellites in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) provide a number of commercial, government, and military services around the world, offering everything from surveillance and monitoring to video calls and internet access. However a dramatic lowering of the cost-per-kilogram to space has led to a recent explosion in real and planned constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of smaller satellites.These constellations are managed remotely and it is important to consider a scenario in which an attacker gains control over the constituent satellites. In this paper we aim to understand what damage this attacker could cause, using the satellites to generate interference.To ground our analysis, we simulate a number of existing and planned LEO constellations against an example GEO constellation, and evaluate the relative effectiveness of each. Our model shows that with conservative power estimates, both current and planned constellations could disrupt GEO satellite services at every groundstation considered, albeit with effectiveness varying considerably between locations.We analyse different patterns of interference, how they reflect the structures of the constellations creating them, and how effective they might be against a number of legitimate services. We find that real-time usage (e.g. calls, streaming) would be most affected, with 3 constellation designs able to generate thousands of outages of 30 seconds or longer over the course of the day across all groundstations.

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“…The ability to Licenses for space operation give strict frequency bands and operating parameters for satellites. As identified in [5], a satellite developer must provide a transmitter survey and potentially verification of emission characteristics, however these mostly rely on a benign satellite operator providing trustworthy data [6], [7]. The adversarial analysis done by Pavur et al shows that physical changes are limited by size and power, but software is extremely difficult to completely externally verify without a detailed code review, which is currently neither conducted nor required.…”

Section: A Sdrs In Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Death By A Thousand COTS: Disrupting Satellite Communications using Low Earth Orbit Constellations

Rawlins¹,

Baker²,

Martinovic³

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

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Satellites in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) provide a number of commercial, government, and military services around the world, offering everything from surveillance and monitoring to video calls and internet access. However a dramatic lowering of the cost-per-kilogram to space has led to a recent explosion in real and planned constellations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of smaller satellites.These constellations are managed remotely and it is important to consider a scenario in which an attacker gains control over the constituent satellites. In this paper we aim to understand what damage this attacker could cause, using the satellites to generate interference.To ground our analysis, we simulate a number of existing and planned LEO constellations against an example GEO constellation, and evaluate the relative effectiveness of each. Our model shows that with conservative power estimates, both current and planned constellations could disrupt GEO satellite services at every groundstation considered, with effectiveness varying considerably between locations.We analyse different patterns of interference, how they reflect the structures of the constellations creating them, and how effective they might be against a number of legitimate services. We found that real-time usage (e.g. calls, streaming) would be most affected, with 3 constellation designs able to generate thousands of outages of 30 seconds or longer over the course of the day across all groundstations.

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In the Same Boat: On Small Satellites, Big Rockets, and Cyber Trust

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

On the (In)Security of 1090ES and UAT978 Mobile Cockpit Information Systems–An Attacker Perspective on the Availability of ADS-B Safety- and Mission-Critical Systems

On the (In)Security of 1090ES and UAT978 Mobile Cockpit Information Systems–An Attacker Perspective on the Availability of ADS-B Safety- and Mission-Critical Systems

Death By A Thousand COTS: Disrupting Satellite Communications using Low Earth Orbit Constellations

Death By A Thousand COTS: Disrupting Satellite Communications using Low Earth Orbit Constellations

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