AUS&R 2013 Air Show Update: Cyber Threats

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Cyber threats to unmanned platforms will multiply as these platforms become more and more common, mainly because the wireless-electronic link is so vulnerable. This according to Colonel (Res.) Gabi Siboni, director of the Cyber Warfare Program at the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), in his address concerning cyber threats.

As an example, he gave the familiar GPS system, the most common navigation system used by civilian autonomous vehicles. It’s relatively easy to block GPS broadcasts, said Siboni, unlike military systems. “But if you’re a determined and well-funded enemy, you can infiltrate and jam even military systems.”

There are several common cyber-attack methods:

• Attacking the hardware. Attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the platform operations during development or maintenance.
• Attacking the wireless communications. The attacker infiltrates the data link between operator and platform, disrupting the vehicle’s operation.
• Attacking the sensors. Jamming them, highjacking sensor signals to ground stations, overcoming the platform’s original signals with more powerful ones, potentially causing it to send back incorrect data.

Gabi Siboni concluded by saying that malware could seriously harm communications and command and control systems used by unmanned vehicles. These cyber threats are growing more and more common, along with the use of autonomous military and civilian vehicles.

IHLS – Israel Homeland Security

So what can we do to protect our systems against cyber attacks?

Udi Doenyas from ZeroDay Group, cyber defense expert, provided some answers. According to him the danger grows as unmanned vehicles become more and more sophisticated and inter-connected. A cyber attack can snatch a UAV, disrupt its operation, even cause it to crash into buildings or airplanes. Its technologies can, in addition, be stolen. All this must be taken into account already in the early stages of each unmanned system design, while considering the paradigm “cyber defense is much harder to play than offense today”.

Udi draws a solution plan in multiple defensive layers and says that cyber attacks can be prevented. Crews must undergo training from development processes to multiple cyber-attack simulations, the systems must be hardened and early warning systems must be incorporated. Once the attack is dismantled, affected hardware and software should be transferred to labs and disassembled for both learning and intelligence causes.

In conclusion, unmanned systems development has to include a mandatory “cyber clause” especially now when commercial demand for cyber security arises also in the unmanned systems industry.