TRITON

Trusted Vessel Information from Trusted On-board Instrumentation

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'A new consciousness has arisen in the scenario of civilian and commercial maritime control: surveillance and safety systems may be under the attack of intentional or unintentional or malevolent players, whose aim (or effect) is to bypass or mystify the control system to obtain economic gain. The advances of mass-price technology, easily sold over the Internet, make this kind of potential events a serious threat that the maritime control has to cope with.

TRITON (TRusted vessel Information from Trusted On-board iNstrumentation) is an R&D project that gives some of the possible answers to the threats above, focusing on increasing the trustworthiness of on-board instrumentation used to report vessel information to the control organisms. Today’s maritime surveillance operations rely on ship reporting systems such as AIS (Automatic Identification System), LRIT (Long Range Identification and Tracking) and VMS (Vessel Monitoring System), whose reported data (such as vessel ID, accurate position and time, course over ground, speed over ground, heading, rate of turn, etc.) are typically not verified nor validated in any way.

Acknowledging the primary role of GNSS to support these reporting systems, a first objective of the TRITON project is to provide to the on-board unit a “trusted” GNSS-based source of positioning and timing information, robust to some intentional jamming and spoofing attacks. A second objective is to provide to the on-board unit a robust communication transceiver, featuring methods for overcoming the present limitations of the communication standards in maritime field, exploiting UHF “white spaces”.

At the end of the project, a proof of concept of the proposed technological solutions will be given in a prototype and appropriate test suites. On top of this, a clear understanding of residual threats will result, based on a comprehensive analysis pursued under different viewpoints: technological, cost-benefits and regulatory.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

New security solutions are under development to minimise or eliminate malicious threats to on-board ship reporting systems.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Maritime control and surveillance depends heavily on ship reporting systems (SRSs), which are vulnerable to attacks by dishonest operators or criminals. With inexpensive technology now available that can be exploited to compromise these systems, it is crucial for the maritime sector to prevent such malicious attacks.

Against this backdrop, the EU-funded http://tritonproject.eu/ (TRITON) (Trusted vessel information from trusted on-board instrumentation) project is working on upgrading on-board equipment in reporting systems. These include vessel monitoring systems and automatic identification systems, as well as long-range identification and tracking.

To achieve its aims, the project team is developing a more robust and secure global navigation satellite system receiver that is impervious to jamming and spoofing attacks. This results in much more accurate information on positioning and timing for on-board equipment. The team is also upgrading very-high-frequency communication between vessels and with land-based stations to ensure better security and communication reliability.

Already, TRITON has analysed state-of-the-art reporting systems, evaluated potential risks and studied relevant legislation. It identified and evaluated security threats in order to establish specifications for designing and developing better equipment. After analysing the best ways to detect jamming and mitigate spoofing, the project proposed feasible and viable security solutions to integrate aboard vessels.

Currently, work is focusing on testing new high-tech solutions that will guard against intentional interference and malicious attacks. The final project results will also include guidelines to advance policymaking and regulations in light of emerging maritime applications and advantages. With more secure surveillance and safety systems, civilian and commercial maritime control will become much more efficient.