NASA plan to use blockchain technology to secure flight data information

A NASA research paper by Ronald J. Reisman has outlined plans to incorporate blockchain technology in a bid to improve the security of flight data information.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandates that all aircraft flying in the National Airspace System must be equipped with an Automatic Dependent Surveillance System (ADS-B) by 2020. However, there are several concerns that complicate the adoption of ADS-B systems, such as issues with privacy, anonymity, authentication, and resistance to malicious interference.

Ronald J. Reisman’s paper dissects how blockchain technology could potentially solve these issues.

Reisman’s introduction reads: “This paper is a contribution to cryptographic secure broadcast authorization by presenting a design and description of illustrative prototype software that addresses these ADS-B vulnerabilities via a novel blockchain-based PKI (public key infrastructure) implementation.”

Reisman proceeds to introduce an “Aviation Blockchain Infrastructure” (ABI) design that enables aircraft to communicate “effectively, securely and privately” with air traffic control and other organised authorities.

The paper primarily focuses on addressing issues of privacy, but notes that the ABI design and implementation could also be used to enable ADS-B systems to broadcast plaintext. This will include an identifying cryptographic token that could be embedded in a transmission and possibly used to authenticate the transmission, helping to protect against spoofing and denial of service attacks.

The ABI in question is based on an open source blockchain platform called “Hyperledger Fabric,” which has been specifically designed for transactions that resemble “typical air traffic management interactions.”

Hyperledger Fabric provides “private channels” which allow communication of private information at a comparatively high bandwidth. The private channels could possibly be used to pass a private key suitable for encrypting ADS-B Out transmissions between any specific aircraft and any particular “authorized member in accordance with the terms of the smart contracts associated with the particular private channel.”

Reisman states: “All simulated aircraft digital identities are enrolled by default as Members of the Air Traffic Management Services (ATMS) organization.”

All simulated ADS-B data is then sent to the ATMS. Each individual aircraft creates its own ledger, which can only be viewed by those in the aircraft and the ATMS.

Whilst this happens, the ATMS creates a ledger of all the ADS-B transmissions from all aircraft, and only the ATMS has permission to access this data.

Reisman concludes: “Although this approach is not perfected, it is based on available technology.”

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