Utilizing air traffic communications for OSINT on state and government aircraft

In recent times, we have witnessed a trend in which communications data is increasingly collected and made open source by the public. A prominent example is the tracking of aircraft movements using unencrypted air traffic control (ATC) communication. This paper studies the implications of such new o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Strohmeier, Martin, Smith, Matthew, Moser, Daniel, Schafer, Matthias, Lenders, Vincent, Martinovic, Ivan
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Air traffic control
Aircraft
Computer science
Government
Military aircraft
Privacy
Tracking
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In recent times, we have witnessed a trend in which communications data is increasingly collected and made open source by the public. A prominent example is the tracking of aircraft movements using unencrypted air traffic control (ATC) communication. This paper studies the implications of such new open source aircraft datasets on the operational privacy of military and government actors. We use publicly available aircraft metadata in conjunction with unfiltered ATC communication gathered from the collaborative sensor network OpenSky. We show that using these datasets, it is possible to collect, process and analyze large numbers of movements in an automated fashion, providing insights into potentially sensitive operations.
ISSN:2325-5366
2325-5374
DOI:10.23919/CYCON.2018.8405023