# Cyber-Security Challenges in Aviation Industry: A Review of Current and Future Trends
## 3 Documented Cyber-Attacks in Aviation Industry (2001-2021)
#### Analysis and Critical Reviews of Cyber-Attacks in the Civil Aviation Industry  
Of all attacks studied, 71% focused on the theft of login details such as administrative passwords and malicious hacking to gain unauthorised access to the IT infrastructure (Figure 1). Denial-of-service attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS), which compromise data availability, rank second at 25%, followed by attacks that target corrupting the integrity of files, either by intercepting them while in transit or at rest, which correspond to 4% of all attacks. This evidence adds credence to the assertions presented in Section 2.3, which posits that the major motivation of threat actors is the theft of intellectual property and intelligence. The assessment of cyber-attack by type is presented in Figure 2, the results of which support the evidence presented in Figure 1, showing that malicious hacking activities top the list of the type of cyber-attacks at 26%, the aim being to gain unauthorised access using known malicious password cracking techniques, for example, brute force or dictionary attacks. Data breach and ransomware attacks are second at 14% each, while attacks related to phishing and malware follow at 11% each. Cyber-incidents classed as human error, bot attacks, worms and DDoS are the most rare, at 4% each. Figure 3 shows that most cyber-attacks within the aviation industry occur in North America, with 11 out of 26 recorded incidents in the United States of America (USA) and \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{42.7 pt} p{42.7 pt} p{42.7 pt} p{42.7 pt} p{42.7 pt} p{42.7 pt}} \hline \hline
**Class** & **Ref** & **Year** & **Incident** & **Source Location** & **Description** \\ \hline C & [43] & 2019 & Phishing attack & OTR & New Zealand & A phishing attack targeted at Air New Zealand & A phishing attacks compromised the personal information of approximately 112,000 customers, with names, details and Airpoints numbers among the data exposed. \\ \hline C & [44] & 2020 & Ransomware attack & OTR & Denver, USA & A cyber-incident that involved the attacker accessing and stealing company data, which were later leaked online. \\ \hline C & [45] & 2020 & Ransomware attack & OTR & San Antonio, USA & Data breach suffered by ST Engineering’s aerospace subsidiary in the USA that later lead to a ransomware attack by Maze Cyber-criminal. \\ \hline I & [46] & 2021 & Software Error & OTR & Birmingham, United Kingdom & A software error in the IT system that could not recognise mass discrepancies between loadsheet and the flight plan, leading to the aircraft having 1606 kg more take-off mass than required. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} C = Confidentiality, I = Integrity, A = Availability, OTR = Online Technical Report and News, TP = Technical Presentation.  
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Table 2: _Cont._  
Figure 1: Cyber-Attack Class based on Security Triad. 1 only in Canada. [PERSON] [47] suggests that the relatively large number of incidents may not be unconnected to the large number of airports in the USA, as in 2019, USA was home to 5080 public and 14,556 private airports. Europe is second with a 44% rate of attack incidents, with Britain topping the list of countries. Nations in Asia come third at 8%, with no known cyber-attacks recorded in airports in Africa. Table 3 captures the number of individuals impacted, the number of times airports were shut down, and the number of days aircraft were grounded owing to cyber-incidents. Incidents during 2018 remain the most numerous, representing the highest rate of cyber-attacks in the history of the aviation industry, with 94,500,000 people affected and about 5 continuous days of aircraft being grounded. The crypto-mining malware discovered by Cyberbit through its Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software in 2019 was, however, the most worrying incident, an installation of malicious software that infected more than 50% of the European airport workstations.