- The project is part of NASA’s effort to improve air traffic safety and management.
- NASA deploys a decentralized ledger to provide tamper-proof verification for flight data.
- NASA tested the system with an Alta-X drone at its Ames Research Center in California.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has begun testing the use of blockchain technology to strengthen cybersecurity in aviation systems, namely protecting plane communications and important flight information from hackers or tampering.
This project is part of NASA’s effort to improve air traffic safety and management. It’s specifically looking for new ways to make the data shared between planes and the ground more secure and trustworthy, as modern aircraft rely more on digital connections and automation.
Rather than depending on conventional centralized databases or multi-layered security systems, NASA’s method deploys a decentralized ledger (the foundational concept of blockchain technology) to provide tamper-proof verification for real-time flight data.
How the Blockchain System Works
Important aviation data, including telemetry, flight plans, operator identification, and navigation information, is logged across a decentralized network of nodes. Each update is cryptographically authenticated, making it considerably hard to tamper with.
Also, each data transaction is timestamped and stored so that any attempt to alter it becomes evident to the entire network. And because the data is stored across many locations, even if one part is compromised, the correct information is kept safe everywhere else, preventing bad data from taking over.
NASA tested the system with an Alta-X drone at its Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The drone was fitted with special equipment needed for blockchain (radio, GPS, and a dedicated computing unit) to simulate actual flight scenarios.
During tests, the blockchain system kept the flight data secure even when faced with simulated hacker attacks. Moreover, NASA engineers deliberately tried to corrupt the data to see how the system would react. Despite these attempts, the system continued to correctly verify and log all the information.
Traditional security uses layers of defenses like firewalls and permissions to block outside threats. Blockchain adds a new kind of security where each part of the system checks every data change, so the entire network doesn’t have to depend on a single security point.
So far, this trial run has shown that blockchain can protect flight data even if the usual security is broken, pointing toward a new, more secure approach to aviation cybersecurity.
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