Vulnerability Analysis and Mitigation of MIL-STD-1553 Communication Protocol

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Gavin Blankenship

Abstract or Description

MIL-STD-1553 is a widely-used network protocol that was published by the United States Department of Defense in 1975. It was created for military avionics. The protocol is currently being used for many military and civilian applications because of its flexibility and easy adoption. MIL-STD-1553 assumes a serial data bus, upon which commands and data are transferred throughout the aircraft. A bus controller always initiates the data transfer with a subsystem in the aircraft known as a remote terminal. The serial data bus is also used for status data request/response. For many years this protocol has been reasonably secure from attacks for many years because of its physical isolation from the external world. Due to technological advances in connectivity, it has become a priority that operators/pilots can detect and protect the subsystems within an aircraft using MIL-STD-1553. Without the correct security measures in place, subsystems in the aircraft such as autopilot, GPS, and many other things are vulnerable to attacks. To determine the vulnerability within MIL-STD-1553, an implementation of the protocol was used to create a simulator of the protocol. From there, cyberattack methods will be put in place to reveal where the vulnerabilities are located within the program. Next, mechanisms will be explored to help detect and mitigate cyberattacks against MIL-STD-1553. 

Mentor

Dr. Weichao Wang