The ADS-B system that is the cornerstone of the FAA’s NextGen ATC modernization plan is at risk of serious security breaches, according to Brad Haines, a hacker and network security consultant who is worried about ADS-B vulnerabilities. Haines first outlined his concerns during a presentation he gave at the Def Con 20 hacker conference in Las Vegas in July. Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is on track to replace radar with a system that broadcasts GPS-based position data to controllers and other ADS-B-equipped aircraft as part of the NextGen system. Yet according to Haines–aka RenderMan–ADS-B signals are unauthenticated and unencrypted, and “spoofing” or inserting a fake aircraft into the ADS-B system is easy.
Haines and another hacker named Nick Foster demonstrated this by spoofing a fake aircraft into the simulated busy airspace over San Francisco, using the open source Flight Gear flight simulator program. Spoofing a target into the real ADS-B system would be a simple matter of transmitting the signal on the ADS-B frequencies (978 and 1090 MHz).
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