City Research Online

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a security analysis of the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) specifications. ERTMS is designed to be fail-safe and the general philosophy of ‘if in doubt, stop the train’ makes it difficult to engineer a train accident. However, it is possible to exploit the fail-safe behaviour of ERTMS and create a situation that causes a train to halt. Thus, denial of service attacks are possible, and could be launched at a time and place of the attacker’s choosing, perhaps designed to cause maximum disruption or passenger discomfort. Causing an accident is more difficult but not impossible.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	Co-hosted with the he 31st International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP) 2012 conference.
Publisher Keywords:	security assessment, safety-critical systems, ERTMS, railway signaling systems, safety and security interactions
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > ZA Information resources > ZA4050 Electronic information resources
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science > Software Reliability

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