Security Consideration For The IPV6 Based Air To Ground Safety Service Communication

Currently European Airspace is using the ATN/OSI and ACARS protocols for the air to ground communication and the US is using ACARS protocol. There is a big movement in the US national airspace and European airspace to move the airplane air to ground safety service communication to the Internet based protocol, using Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) from exiting ACARS and ATN/OSI. When the airplane moves to the IPv6 based air to ground communication, the airplane is essentially a mobile node equipped with multiple air to ground radio technology interfaces with several network interfaces. These network interfaces have different access technologies, both terrestrial and satellite communication (VHF, HFR, SATCOM etc.). Different requirements of different applications can result in different preferences of the interface or air to ground communication means that expose different attack surfaces, vulnerabilities and security issues. Network connections should be placed in the best possible interface and the security related to the various access networks should be considered to protect both data and the control of the plane traffic. Due to multiple technologies and multiple access network technologies, the Aviation safety service IPv6 air to ground network needs to address multiple security risks. In this paper we present an overview of security issues and explore the challenges and motivations of security measures for the multiple access networks to protect the safety service IPv6 air to ground communication. This review is critical because securing future air to ground communication for the safety service is a difficult problem. It can be an obstacle to aviation IPv6 deployment in the mission-critical environment. We also present the architectural goals and security measures that should be considered while deploying the IPv6 for the safety service air to ground communication.