Protected AIS: A Demonstration of Capability Scheme to Provide Authentication and Message Integrity

• Main Author: Gary C. Kessler
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Gdynia Maritime University 2020-06-01
• Series: TransNav: International Journal on Marine Navigation and Safety of Sea Transportation
• Subjects: cyber security; automatic identification system (ais); protected ais (pais); message integrity; authentication; virtual aids to navigation; pretty good privacy (pgp); cryptography
• Online Access: http://www.transnav.eu/files/Protected AIS: A Demonstration of Capability Scheme to Provide Authentication and Message Integrity,1002.pdf

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides situational awareness for vessels at sea. AIS has a number of known security vulnerabilities that can lead to a several types of attacks on AIS, including the ability to create ghost vessels, false warning or meteorological messages, or bogus virtual aids-to-navigation (AtoN). A number of methods, with varying levels of complexity, have been proposed to better secure AIS and, indeed, emerging AIS protocols will implement some of these mechanisms. Nevertheless, little has been done to secure the current standards, which will remain in use for some time. This paper presents Protected AIS (pAIS), a demonstration of capability implementation using public-key cryptography methods to address several AIS security vulnerabilities, maintain backward compatibility, and be able to interoperate with non-pAIS devices.