SEcuring Integrated Modular Avionics Computers

The evolution of aircraft IT infrastructure tends to increasingly share computing resources between different applications, use COTS hardware and software, be open to applications and equipment provided by the airlines, and communicate with the outside world. This trend would give more opportunities for potential attackers to corrupt the onboard computing systems, if adequate security measures were not taken to counter these threats. This paper proposes 1) a classification of the potential attacks that may target avionics embedded systems and 2) a description of attack experiments that have been carried out on an experimental real-time kernel compliant with the ARINC-653 standard. It also proposes several generic countermeasures in order to improve the security of avionic embedded systems.