Certificate-based Trust Establishment for Airplane Software Distribution David von Oheimb∗

Contemporary developments in airplane manufacturing and maintenance are motivating the introduction of significant new IT infrastructure, supporting increased communication and data transfer among aircraft and a variety of ground-based information systems oper-ated by airlines and their business partners. A next generation of airplane designs, incorpo-rating wired and wireless network interfaces, will support a wide spectrum of ”eEnabled” or network-enabled applications, including distribution of airplane software, collection and off-board retrieval of airplane health reports, perhaps even participation in advanced collab-orative air traffic control. In this context it is clear that airline business viability and even flight safety will come to depend on the security of data transported in these applications. Trust is a fundamental element of security and information assurance in any business context, and must be treated as such in the design of networked IT systems. We consider the establishment and maintenance of trust relations for an application typical of network-enabled airplane applications, namely an Airplane Assets Distribution System (AADS) which affords a capability for on-line distribution of airplane-resident software from suppli-ers via airlines to airplanes. The AADS involves a large number of parties, among who