Abstract
In the maritime sector, the integration of radar systems, Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) through digital technologies enables several benefits to maritime operations, but also make ships prone to cyberattacks. In this context, this work investigates the feasibility of an attacker using a radar system or AIS as open door to remotely send commands to a cyber threat hosted on a ship, even if the ship’s systems are air gapped—i.e., are not connected to other networks. The received commands are intended to trigger a cyber threat located in the ship. Although the literature covers several analyzes on cyber risks and vulnerabilities in naval systems, it lacks exploiting mechanisms capable of acknowledging attack commands received through radar and AIS. To this end, this work proposes a triggering mechanism that uses a template matching technique to detect specific patterns transmitted by the attacker to the ship’s radar or AIS. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique as a tool to acknowledge the received attack commands and activate a malicious code previously installed on the ship. In the case of attacks on a radar system, the accuracy achieved by the proposed method is 0.90. In the case of attacks on an AIS/ECDIS setup it presents an accuracy of 0.93. In both cases the proposed mechanism maintains the due safety against accidental attack activations.
Highlights
Cyberattacks in the maritime environment have so far resulted in limited impacts and losses
This paper presents a mechanism through which an attacker located outside the ship can use a radar system or an Automatic Identification System (AIS) as open door to remotely send commands to a cyber threat hosted in the vessel, even if the ship’s systems are not connected to other networks
This work presents a triggering mechanism through which an attacker located outside the ship can use a radar or an AIS as open door to remotely send commands to a cyber threat hosted in the vessel, even if the ship’s systems are air gapped—i.e., not connected to other networks
Summary
Cyberattacks in the maritime environment have so far resulted in limited impacts and losses. The referred study is not focused on naval radars, it presents a data fusion algorithm to combat false data injection attacks in a generic networked radar system This said, considering the state of the art of ship systems, the example of the Operation. The current AIS standard [11] lacks security mechanisms [3], which can make it prone to be exploited as an open door for cyberattacks Taking it into account, this paper presents a mechanism through which an attacker located outside the ship can use a radar system or an AIS as open door to remotely send commands to a cyber threat hosted in the vessel, even if the ship’s systems are not connected to other networks.
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