"Hackers Could Try to Take over a Military Aircraft; Can a Cyber Shuffle Stop Them?"
Many aircraft, spacecraft, and weapons systems contain an onboard computer network referred to as military standard 1553, sometimes known as MIL-STD-1553 or just 1553. The network is a tried-and-true protocol for enabling communications between systems such as radar, flight controls, and the heads-up display. According to Chris Jenkins, a Sandia cybersecurity scientist, securing these networks against a cyberattack is a national security issue. He said that if a hacker took control of 1553 mid-flight, the pilot would lose control of critical aircraft systems. Several researchers across the US are developing protections for systems that use the MIL-STD-1553 protocol. Chris and his Sandia team recently collaborated with Purdue University researchers in West Lafayette, Indiana, to test an idea that could protect these critical networks. Their findings, which were recently published in the scientific journal IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, show that when used correctly, a technique known in the cybersecurity realm as Moving Target Defense (MTD) can effectively secure MIL-STD-1553 networks against a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm. This article continues to discuss the collaborative work on a moving target defense that makes a computer network commonly used on many aircraft, spacecraft, and weapons systems less vulnerable to cyberattacks.