A Review and Analysis of Attack Vectors on MIL-STD-1553 Communication Bus

MIL-STD-1553 has been used for the past four decades by the military as a standardized, reliable, and fault-tolerant communication bus to provide connectivity between different embedded components in mission-critical military vehicles. The bus was designed with a great focus on reliability, responsiveness, and fault tolerance. However, its security aspects were an afterthought. Indeed, in the early 1970s, the notion of cyberattacks was not ubiquitous as it is today. Attacking computerized systems located at very high altitudes was an inconceivable scenario for many people, including security engineers. With current developments in cybersecurity and telecommunication networks, the security analysis of the MIL-STD-1553 bus reveals that the system is not immune from cyberattacks. The bus is vulnerable to many attacks that could seriously damage the entire system. Rebuilding the security of MIL-STD-1553 from scratch is cost prohibitive and a very complex, not scalable, and inflexible approach. A common alternative to embedding security to the existing system is the development of an intrusion detection system that can be added to the MIL-STD-1553 bus with minimal cost. In this article, we review and discuss some possible attack vectors on the MIL-STD-1553 bus. Then, we analyze the risk and consequences of each attack vector on a fighter jet. This review and analysis will provide security engineers with a holistic overview of possible attacks and their related risk on MIL-STD-1553 to better design an effective intrusion detection system.