Securing navigation of unmanned maritime systems

Abstract

Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS), such as Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), are increasingly playing a critical role in expanding the undersea superiority of a nation, addressing growing challenges, such as, inter alia, in piracy, natural resource disputes, drug trafficking, weapons proliferation, as well as being highly used for science and survey missions. Autonomous capabilities in USVs can reduce the costs of reaching into distant environments and using that reach to meet a particular mission’s objectives. However, to take on increased autonomy in unmanned systems, USVs will increasingly require the ability to be untethered from human interaction, and a key enabler to effecting this is accurate navigation. USVs have traditionally depended on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), which are known to have security and safety vulnerabilites. Using systems-theoretic process analysis (STPA), this paper provides systematic analyses of the attack surfaces and of the impact of cyber attacks against the navigational aspects of Unmanned Surface Vehicles. As part of these analyses, we identify potential threats, vulnerabilities and attacks in the Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) functionalities of USVs. These analyses can be used to drive a USV’s architecture, leading to the design of more effective and secure USV operations.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jonathan Downes: orcid.org/0000-0003-2027-4474

ORCID for Gary Wills: orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-4088

ORCID for Mark Zwolinski: orcid.org/0000-0002-2230-625X

ORCID for Michael Butler: orcid.org/0000-0003-4642-5373

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