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Securing the Automatic Identification System (AIS): Using public key cryptography to prevent spoofing whilst retaining backwards compatibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2021

Gareth Wimpenny ,
Jan Šafář ,
Alan Grant  and
Martin Bransby
Gareth Wimpenny*
Affiliation:
The General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland
Jan Šafář
Affiliation:
The General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland
Alan Grant
Affiliation:
The General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland
Martin Bransby
Affiliation:
The General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The civilian Automatic Identification System (AIS) has no inherent protection against spoofing. Spoofed AIS messages have the potential to interfere with the safe navigation of a vessel by, amongst other approaches, spoofing maritime virtual aids to navigation and/or differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSS) correction data conveyed across it. Acting maliciously, a single transmitter may spoof thousands of AIS messages per minute with the potential to cause considerable nuisance; compromising information provided by AIS intended to enhance the mariner's situational awareness. This work describes an approach to authenticate AIS messages using public key cryptography (PKC) and thus provide unequivocal evidence that AIS messages originate from genuine sources and so can be trusted. Improvements to the proposed AIS authentication scheme are identified which address a security weakness and help avoid false positives to spoofing caused by changes to message syntax. A channel loading investigation concludes that sufficient bandwidth is available to routinely authenticate all AIS messages whilst retaining backwards compatibility by carrying PKC ‘digital signatures’ in a separate VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) side channel.

Keywords

AISSpoofingAuthenticationVDES
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 75 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 333 - 345
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Navigation

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