CRUISE
Cyber secuRity in Uas mIssions by SatellitE link

All the aeronautical European development plans suggest a vast diffusion and application of remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAS) in many industrial areas, from land monitoring of specific areas to sensible zones patrolling. The integration of RPAS in a non-segregated airspace sets some real challenges related to cyber-attack risk assessment. Cyber-attacks to RPAS can affect operation safety and airspace safety or, in the worst hypothesis, they can seriously injure people and damage property. CRUISE’s intent is to design, develop and validate a CyberSec Test Range, a technological framework which is strictly linked to Gottaglie Airport, a center that already experiments RPAS and studies the integration of UAS in non-segregated airspace, a place where the overall assessment on vulnerability and resilience of UAS with respect to cyber-attacks can be led. The CyberSec Test Range will set up a combination of services combining ICT systems, SATCOM and SATNAV services aimed at evaluating the overall vulnerability of UAS, and this includes the analysis of flight platforms, on board avionics and payload sensors. Moreover, quality, consistency and integrity of data collected during VLOS, RLOS, BRLOS operations will be verified. The following categories of cyber-attacks will be subject to the examination:

• Hardware attacks – the hacker has direct access to the RPAS;
• Wireless attacks – the hacker uses wireless communication channels in order to attack command, control and communication systems;
• Sensor Spoofing – The hacker substitutes real data collected by the on-board sensors (i.e. receivers, vision, radar, sonar, LIDAR and IR sensors) with fake data.