Paperless ship navigation: cyber security weaknesses

Boris Svilicic (), Miho Kristić, Srđan Žuškin and David Brčić
Additional contact information
Boris Svilicic: University of Rijeka
Miho Kristić: University of Dubrovnik
Srđan Žuškin: University of Rijeka
David Brčić: University of Rijeka

Journal of Transportation Security, 2020, vol. 13, issue 3, No 5, 203-214

Abstract: Abstract Maritime transportation is backbone of globalized trade and the manufacturing supply chain as nowadays more than four fifths of world merchandise trade by volume is carried by ships. Safe navigation of ships of today depends heavily on cyber-physical systems, of which the central is the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS). The paperless ship navigation is allowed when the type approved ECDIS with official electronic navigation charts acts as an independent backup for the primary system. In this paper, we present an analysis of cyber security weaknesses of the paperless ship navigation that relies on two internetworked ECDIS workstations in the backup arrangement. The method of analysis is based on cyber security testing of the ECDIS workstations with an industry vulnerability scanner tool. The detected vulnerabilities are analysed in the context of ECDIS backup arrangement and safeguards implemented on board the paperless ship. The obtained results suggest that the critical cyber threat vectors result from uncontrolled internetworking of unmaintained ECDIS workstations with identical hardware and software configurations.

Keywords: Navigation safety; Paperless ship; Cyber-physical system; ECDIS backup arrangement; Maritime cyber security; Cyber security testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12198-020-00222-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jtrsec:v:13:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s12198-020-00222-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/12198

DOI: 10.1007/s12198-020-00222-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Transportation Security is currently edited by Andrew Thomas

More articles in Journal of Transportation Security from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().