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Towards secure air traffic surveillance: A survey on ADS-B threats, existing solutions, and future research

Ahmed, Waqas
; 
Masood, Ammar
; 
Manzoor, Jawad
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Identifiers
https://hdl.handle.net/10379/19444
 https://doi.org/10.13025/30233
Publication Date
2026-01-12
Keywords
ADS-B, security and privacy, air traffic control, aviation security, surveillance, cryptography
Type
journal article
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Ahmed, W., Masood, A., & Manzoor, J. (2026). Towards Secure Air Traffic Surveillance: A Survey on ADS-B Threats, Existing Solutions, and Future Research. IEEE Open Journal of the Computer Society, 7, 290-313. https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCS.2026.3651384
Abstract
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) has transformed air traffic surveillance systems by improving flight efficiency, reducing operational costs, and enhancing situational awareness. Despite the protocol's advantages, its unencrypted and open nature makes it vulnerable to significant cybersecurity threats, including message injections, message spoofing, jamming, and message modification attacks, which pose serious risks to aviation efficiency and safety. This research survey comprehensively evaluates ADS-B security, analyzing its vulnerabilities, threat landscape, and mitigation methodologies. We systematically categorize state-of-the-art security solutions, including artificial intelligence(AI)-based intrusion detection, cryptographic approaches, signal and time-based solutions, physical-layer security, and blockchain-based ADS-B authentication and integrity frameworks. A comparative analysis of the categorized security solutions highlights their feasibility, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, and real-world implementation trade-offs. Furthermore, this survey paper identifies key challenges to securing ADS-B, such as compatibility with legacy systems, regulatory constraints, and computational limitations. It outlines future research directions to enhance ADS-B resilience. By focusing on the identified security gaps, this research survey proposes a multi-layered and robust security method for ADS-B, ensuring modern air traffic surveillance systems' confidentiality, integrity, availability, and authenticity.
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Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
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CC BY
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