1st Workshop on
Secure and Reliable Communication and Navigation in the Aerospace Domain (SRCNAS)

6th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy
http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/EuroSP2021/
September 6-10, 2021, Vienna, Austria - remote event



The digital revolution is here, transforming the way we live as it finds its way into a wide variety of domains including transportation, smart home, eHealth and knowledge transfer, but it also affects the way the airspace operates. New data-hungry applications, and increasing degrees of automation beg the question whether the available resources, like bandwidth, data formats, and radio standards are still adequate. This is particularly questionable in aviation, where data is produced, evaluated and distributed with ever decreasing latency, and these data is usually very sensitive, sometimes even safety-critical, but the underlying technical systems are often a half-century old. For these data, protection from unauthorized access, misuse, and manipulation is absolutely essential. Various statistics show that the communication backbone in aviation has proved a coveted target for cyber-attacks, particularly as the security infrastructure is largely outdated and data poorly secured, especially during exchange or update processes. Manifold investigations showed that also signaling used for navigation purposes became a target of attackers by tampering the signals (e.g., using radio interference or spoofing of navigation receivers), as it depends on satellite navigation, particularly GPS, as a low-cost, widely available source of reliable positioning. These examples call for a variety of solutions and technologies increasing safety & sustainability of the involved industry.

Therefore, this workshop deals with the topic of secure and trustworthy communication and navigation in aviation. Here, not only current vulnerabilities will be identified, but also concrete research results will be presented and discussed. While a few years ago, the airspace could only be accessed for commercial purposes by incumbent operators and the scope of communication was limited, it has already changed due to digitalization. It will change even more significantly with the arrival of new entrants in the air space, such as unmanned aerial vehicles. This means that in the near future a high number of aircraft will have to share common resources of space and data volume in unprecedented ways. Further convoluted by a lag in the development of international technical standards, as unmanned aerial vehicles will enter the system, these data will have to be analyzed or exchanged even faster between even more operators in order to sustain the safety and economic viability of aviation. We invite experts and researchers from various areas of aeronautics and telecommunications to discuss the topic and specify any challenges and frameworks for the future. Selected papers will be presented at the workshop and included in the EuroS&P 2021 proceedings.


Keynote by Timo Warns (Airbus): Security Above the Clouds -- Protecting Aircraft Information Systems

Abstract: Aircraft and their avionics are getting increasingly interconnected, which, while bringing numerous advantages, also increases both complexity and the surface to security threats. The mitigation of such threats is paramount to maintain aircraft operations and airworthiness. Aircraft information security is the discipline of mitigating aircraft security risks resulting from intentional unauthorized electronic interactions. It relies on processes and principles put in place by the civil aviation community for threat identification and mitigation and for the demonstration of airworthiness in the presence of threats. The presentation gives an overview on the aircraft security threat landscape, the processes and methods in place to address the associated risks, and the concepts and principles underlying today's aircraft information security architectures.

Bio: Timo Warns is an Expert on Aircraft Information Security Architectures at Airbus since 2017 with more than 10 years of experience in this domain. He is an active contributor to different aviation standards developing organizations (ICAO, RTCA, EUROCAE, AEEC). Before working as a security engineer and technical information security consultant, he was awarded a Doctorate degree on fault-tolerant, distributed computing in 2009 by the University of Oldenburg, Germany, where he also completed his studies in Computer Science.



Topics of interest among others in the investigates area are:

  • Threat propagation in safety-critical networks
  • Security risk assessment, mitigation, assurance and testing
  • Model-based security engineering
  • Security strategies and solutions (e.g., secure communication and navigation protocols, secure networking and hardware security)
  • Application of artificial intelligence (e.g., neural networks, threat detection and prevention)
  • Use-cases in commercial and private sector
  • Link-Layer Security
  • Quantum/Post-Quantum Security and applications in Aerospace


The CfP of the Workshop SRCNAS is available here.



Important Deadlines:

  • Deadline for paper submission: May 21, 2021 Extension until June 6, 2021 AOE (firm)
  • Acceptance notification: June 21, 2021
  • Camera ready submission: July 16, 2021 at 17:00 CEST Submission Link
  • Workshop date: September 6, 2021 (afternoon)


Technical Program Committee:

  • Cora Perner, Airbus Cybersecurity GmbH, Germany
  • Frank Schubert, Airbus Cybersecurity GmbH, Germany
  • Hannes Bartz, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany
  • Kathleen Kramer, University of San Diego, USA
  • Nader S. Labib, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
  • Nemanja Ignjatov, University of Vienna, Austria
  • Nils Mäurer, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany
  • Okuary Osechas, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany
  • Pascal Thubert, CISCO, France
  • Rafael Apaza, NASA Glenn Research Center, USA
  • Salil Kanhere, UNSW Sydney, Australia
  • Sophie Damy, European Commission, Belgium
  • Tobias Guggemos, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany


Paper Submission Guidelines:

Papers must be submitted in a form suitable: all author names and affiliations must appear on the title page. Papers must not exceed 10 pages total (including the references and appendices). Papers must be typeset in LaTeX in A4 format (not "US Letter") using the IEEE conference proceeding template with the appropriate options from EuroS&P 2021. Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for readiness. Your document should render correctly in Adobe Reader XI and when printed in black and white.



Workshop organizers:

  • Corinna Schmitt, Research Institute CODE, Universität der Bundeswehr München
  • Thomas Gräupl, Institute of Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Center (DLR)

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