Swiss army identifies gaps in civil aircraft collision warning system

Cyber Defense Campus locates gaps in aircraft collision warning system Keystone-SDA

The Cyber-Defence Campus of the Swiss defence ministry has found two vulnerabilities in the collision warning system for civil aviation.

A team from the Cyber-Defence Campus succeeded in triggering false warnings on a pilot cockpit, according to a statement from the Federal Office of Armaments (Armasuisse) on Monday. These were carried out on a certified processor of the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) II, with its own radio setup.

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In January, the US Cyber Defense Agency (CISA) and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) classified the vulnerabilities as moderate and severe respectively. This assessment is groundbreaking for other regions, Armasuisse wrote, including Europe.

According to the FAA’s assessment, no technical countermeasures are currently available. TCAS is mandatory for civil aircraft weighing 5.7 tonnes or more and serves as a final measure to avoid collisions.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

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