Wireless Security in Critical Infrastructures: Legacy Debt and Opportunities

Thu 25Mar2021

Martin Strohmeier, Swiss Cyber Defence Campus & University of Oxford

From 12:30 until 13:30

At Zoom: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/97959381128

https://ethz.zoom.us/j/97959381128

Abstract:

A multitude of wireless technologies are used by an aircraft during flight. From a conceptual perspective, all of them are insecure as security was never part of their design and the evolution of legacy systems in aviation did not keep up with the state of the art. Recent contributions from academic and hacking communities have exploited this inherent vulnerability and demonstrated attacks on some of these technologies, revealing a large discrepancy between the security perspective and the safety-focused point of view of the aviation community.

This talk examines the current state of wireless security in aviation from a systems perspective and discusses whether it is possible to impact aircraft systems and human users in practice. We will discuss security, privacy, and safety, and how similar wireless legacy issues transcend domains (e.g., into space and maritime).

Finally, we look towards potential opportunities within these legacy systems. Specifically, we propose that through the use of crowdsourced sensor networks the detection of and the robustness against attacks can be increased. We will provide evidence for this hypothesis from our large-scale sensor network OpenSky and elaborate on its growing utility beyond security. We conclude that crowdsourced networks show great potential to significantly improve the resilience and efficiency of future smart cities and countries.

Join the Zoom meeting at 12:30 on Thursday, March 25th: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/97959381128

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