Remote control of ship systems via rogue devices: exploiting insecure fieldbus communication

The main control systems on ships use primitive and insecure fieldbuses for communication. This paper describes a possible attack that exploits the low security of these communi- cation channels to control a ship remotely. A practical example is used to show how much knowledge an attacker needs, how much effort is required for hardware and software and which access options are the minimum requirement for a successful attack. If the attack described in this paper is carried out skillfully, there is currently little the crew can do to counter such an attack, apart from completely immobilizing the ship for the time being.