Hunting Vulnerabilities in the Maritime Domain: A Domain Wide Cybersecurity Vulnerability Analysis
摘要
The maritime domain, constituting over 80% of global trade, is a critical component of the world economy, facilitating the transfer of vast quantities of goods across the globe. In this way, the success of other crucial sectors vital to the normal functioning of life relies heavily on the pivotal role of the maritime domain. People have been navigating waterways through ships since ancient times. With technological progress, the structure and functioning of these ships have changed drastically. Modern ships comprise a wide array of interconnected and complicated information and operational cyber physical systems. With increasing connectivity through modern communication technologies, these systems are fast becoming connected to the outside world. Furthermore, the trend of remote-controlled and autonomous ships is expected to increase soon. Hence, assessing the cybersecurity posture of the maritime systems and identifying & fixing the vulnerabilities that comprise those ships is of utmost importance. To achieve these objectives, this research contributes in two ways, 1) proposing a comprehensive vulnerability and threat analysis methodology, named MaThreX developed to compile maritime-related known vulnerabilities and gather related threat-related information providing key insights to enhance decision-making and security measures, and 2) results from utilizing MaThreX for conducting a domain-wide analysis of the vulnerabilities found in the maritime assets and infer threat-related information to capture the threat landscape in the domain.