Projects

Aviation Security

The information technology revolution, combined with people's need to access information quickly, has resulted in the explosive growth of the Internet in the past decade. With the recent introduction of Boeing’s Connexion services, the provisioning of Internet access from within an airplane is now a commercially viable service. Services offered under the aegis of Connexion include, among others, access to home or office computers, Internet portals, etc. The emphasis of the current project is on the facilitation of an enhanced security feature-set that would be more applicable to smaller aircrafts.

The presence of an IP network between the aircraft and ground stations presents many possibilities in terms of new services being offered to passengers within the airplane, advanced avionics that would enable ground-staff to control the performance of an airplane, and enhanced security features that would allow the download of appropriate data, voice and video streams in real-time to the ground station.

While it is important for an airplane to maintain network connectivity with ground stations, the security of the available network connection forms an important aspect of the overall network architecture. Wireless networks must deal with the same security problems facing wired networks to protect mobile hosts and network resources from unauthorized access. There are risks from nodes coming from different networks to launch attacks such as hacking, denial of service, etc., when they use common network resources and services offered by a mobility-supporting subnet. Security mechanisms that are valid for terrestrial networks must be enhanced for their integration into the framework of aviation security since the non-availability of the link connecting an airplane with its ground stations could potentially result in loss of both life and revenue. Currently, the design and implementation of a behavior-based intelligent Intrusion Detection System (IDS) applicable within the framework of a networked airplane is being looked into.

Management is one of the most important aspects in any networked environment. Typically network management has two parts in it: Network Visualization and Network Management. While network visualization provides the administrators with data like network resource usage statistics, network health status, and connectivity information, network management allows the administrator in controlling the behavior of the network. Most of the network management tools are built based on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) which run in the background and probe every network device for specific information. A Network Visualization and Management Tool (NVMT) has been developed for the same.

The usage of IPv6 and its implications in terms of mobility provisioning, Mobile IPv6 operations, and modifications within the test-bed configured in the ANRC to accommodate IPv6 addressing is also being considered.