New System Defends Airports Against Hackers

New System Defends Airports Against Hackers

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11516846_m featureIn response to the growing range of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, Thales and Raytheon have launched a product that alerts customers to disruptive hacking of air-traffic radars.

Cybair Picture checks for anomalies in radar data that could indicate cyber attacks or electronic attacks.

Cybair Picture will spot telltale signs of hacking such as planes flying beyond the normal range of a radar or remaining visible to the radar while flying behind a mountain. Cross checking then allows the user to see which radar in a network is reporting false data and is therefore infected.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

According to Defense News the system was acquired by the French military this year and is due to go operational in 2015, said Cecilia Aguero, an engineer with Thales’ AirC4I business unit. The system uses individual monitoring units dubbed the RadBox by Thales, launched last year, which operate together to form the Cybair Picture package.

Aguero said a reported example of a cyber attack on an air defense radar network was Operation Orchard in 2007, when Israel allegedly disrupted Syria’s radar network to allow aircraft to fly into Syria to bomb a planned nuclear site.

Aguero said a product to spot the consequences of hacking was necessary because tools to stop hackers from getting into a radar network could not be relied upon.