Information Technology Security Threats to Modern e-Enabled Aircraft: A Cautionary Note

Most passengers, airlines, and the aircraft industry in general are used to very high safety standards and precautions surrounding aircraft systems. As the computerization of aircraft steadily progresses, the question of security, i.e. the protection against intentional manipulations, becomes increasingly relevant. This article focuses on these security challenges. In particular, it adds the following contributions: It assesses the current state of public research on aircraft IT security and contrasts it with an evaluation of the threat-level through a discussion of recent attacks and vulnerabilities. This shows that many attack vectors are not protected against by the state-of-the-art technology implemented in today’s aircraft. In addition, increasing digitalization, connectivity, and similar developments of modern (“e-enabled”) aircraft are shown to cause an ever larger attack surface. This results in challenges to the aircraft industry which are discussed in the final part of this paper and lead to a requirement for additional technical, organizational, educational, and regulatory counter-measures.