Securing the Air–Ground Link in Aviation

Air-ground communication in aviation uses many air traffic control technologies, data links, and wireless communication protocols. Security research has shown that attackers can exploit fundamental deficiencies that exist as of today in all of these categories. In this chapter, we analyze the current situation of the aviation airground link in a comprehensive manner. We collect reported security and privacy incidents and stratify them by major airground link technologies. We then discuss academic research that has proposed potentital countermeasures. To this end, we create a novel taxonomy and propose future directions for aviation security research.