Raytheon system could counter cyberattacks.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

* Raytheon is working on a system that could alert pilots to potential cyberattacks onboard an aircraft.

The prototype uses a commercial-off-the-shelf flight simulator to create avionics bus traffic--which includes data from the various components used in the aircraft--that can then be monitored. Raytheon's system detects anomalies in the information and can alert pilots to discrepancies, said Bill Leigher, director of the company's government cybersecurity solutions business.

"Really just about all that we did... was writing code that is monitoring the information coming out of this flight simulator," he said. The traffic that is there is predictive and small changes can signal that something is wrong.

During the demo, Raytheon programmed bad code into the system that set off an alarm indicating there was a fire in both engines of the aircraft when it reached 10,000 feet. "It's completely a cyberattack, it's not real," he said.

Raytheon's product could "turn into a self-healing system that ... [says], 'There is in fact no fire because we've looked at four other sensors that would indicate that there is a fire, and we're going to nullify that'" alert, he noted.

There is a great need for a platform that can detect cyberattacks mid-flight, Leigher said. If someone "can shut down key functions on the mission computer... you can probably make the aircraft non-mission capable," he said.

The system, which is funded through internal research-and-development...