Avionics Vulnerability Assessment Mitigation and Protection (AVAMP)

Added: May 29, 2015 10:31 am AVAMP Industry Day 21 MAY 2015 - Attendee List and Briefing Charts. Three attachments.

Added: Apr 01, 2015 9:19 am

The Avionics Vulnerability Mitigation branch (AFRL/RYWA) in the Sensors
Directorate conducts basic and applied research and advanced development to
understand and improve cyber security of U.S. Air Force platforms and weapon systems
operating in contested cyber domain. The activity involves understanding the threat to
legacy and future weapon systems, discovering, characterizing, and mitigating cyber
vulnerabilities and developing protections against cyber-attack to provide fight-through
capability. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) solicits innovative research
proposals to address these needs and to integrate, test, and evaluate developed
technologies into the AFRL AVAMP embedded system cyber research platform.
Performers under this activity will advance the state-of-the-art in embedded system cyber
security offering novel and innovative approaches to understand and defeat advanced
cyber threats and protect our systems so they operate as intended and provide mission
assurance to the commander.

Some or all elements of the research may be performed at AFRL facilities at Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) or at appropriate contractor facilities. The integration,
test, and evaluation will be performed in appropriate facilities at AFRL, WPAFB. (See
section 4)

AFRL seeks and encourages small business participation through teaming arrangements
and/or as performers on individual task and subtask research activities.

The objective of this research program is to investigate and develop methodologies, tools,
techniques, and capabilities to identify susceptibilities and mitigate vulnerabilities in
avionics systems and to protect the avionics against cyber-attack. Responsive research
will explore new and emerging concepts related to development, integration, assessment,
evaluation, and demonstration of embedded system cyber security technologies. Attack
vectors of interest include physical, remote, and supply chain access. For this solicitation,
avionics is defined to include both manned and remotely piloted vehicles, on-board
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems, munitions, and any
equipment, component, or subsystem that could compromise mission assurance of the Air
Force weapon system. Mitigation and protection techniques and solutions developed
under this program are expected to interface and interoperate with anti-tamper and open
avionics system architectures and be applied to a wide-range of associated platforms and
in contested environments including but not limited to, electronic warfare systems, space
systems, and mobile devices.

Identified technical challenges to accomplish objectives include, but are not limited to, (1) developing automated tools to support avionics vulnerability assessments, (2) developing automated reverse engineering, program understanding and software assurance tools to identify and detect weaknesses in avionics software/firmware/hardware, (3) developing malware detection tools and countermeasures, and (4) developing techniques to detect, respond and adapt to never-before-seen attacks in operationally relevant time scales.