Security Analysis and Design for TAGA: a Touch and Go Assistant in the Aerospace Domain
This addresses security challenges for wireless communication in airport ground operations, such as refueling, but is incremental as it builds on existing security methods.
The paper tackled the security design for TAGA, a system enabling secure machine-to-machine communication in aerospace ground processes, and demonstrated that combining advanced security protocols with local process measures results in designs resilient to long-term key compromises and parallel attacks.
There is currently a drive in the aerospace domain to introduce machine to machine communication over wireless networks to improve ground processes at airports such as refuelling and air conditiong. To this end a session key has to be established between the aircraft and the respective ground unit such as a fuel truck or a pre-conditiong unit. This is to be provided by a `touch and go assistant in the aerospace domain' (TAGA), which allows an operator to pair up a ground unit and an aircraft present at a parking slot with the help of a NFC system. In this paper, we present the results of our security analysis and co-development of requirements, security concepts, and modular verification thereof. We show that by, and only by, a combination of advanced security protocols and local process measures we obtain secure and resilient designs for TAGA. In particular, the design of choice is fully resilient against long-term key compromises and parallel escalation of attacks.