Holistic Approach of Integrated Navigation Equipment for Cybersecurity at Sea

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated the interest of analyzing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) and AIS (Automatic Id entification System) data to improve the safety of naval infrastructures for a wide spectrum of maritime applications. However, in-depth analyses also underline the sensitivity of these systems to attacks such as jamming and spoofing. In this context, it is essential that researchers, specialized organizations and companies rely on realistic data to improve these types of systems to better detect and cope with potential threats. However, because of the lack of open data sets, or due to financial, technical or operational reasons, the use of simulated data is preferred in most cases over real life data, which can lead to biases. To cope with this challenge, we have developed a prototype called “HAPPINESS” for “Holistic APProach of Integrated Navigation Equipment for Cybersecurity at Sea”. The main objective of this dedicated and autonomous embedded system is to collect navigation data in real time without using proprietary or restrictive protocols. The generated open data, then continuously feeds a cyber naval platform able to reproduce the functional and operational systems of a ship. This prototype allows to reproduce the kinematics of a ship in various contexts (like specific maneuvers, long tracks, docking…) in NMEA format in order to design highly realistic scenarios based on real life data and allowing to obtain more complete and richer data (than those freely accessible online) in terms of information, giving additional means to detect anomalies on navigation systems.