A Survey of Security Challenges and Solutions for Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Aircraft

Mahyar Ghazanfari; Iman Sharifi; Peng Wei; Noah Dahle; Abel Diaz Gonzalez; Austin Coursey; Bryce Bjorkman; Cailani Lemieux-Mack; Robert Canady; Abenezer Taye; Bryan C. Ward; Xenofon Koutsoukos; Gautam Biswas; Maheed H. Ahmed; Hyeong Tae Kim; Mahsa Ghasemi; Vijay Gupta; Filippos Fotiadis; Ufuk Topcu; Junchi Lu; Alfred Chen; Abdul Kareem Ras; Nischal Aryal; Amer Ibrahim; Amir Shirkhodaie; Heber Herencia-Zapana; Saqib Hasan; Isaac Amundson

arXiv · 2601.14415

A Survey of Security Challenges and Solutions for Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Aircraft

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Abstract

This survey reviews the existing and envisioned security vulnerabilities and defense mechanisms relevant to Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) systems, with a focus on electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Drawing from vulnerabilities in the avionics in commercial aviation and the automated unmanned aerial systems (UAS), the paper presents a taxonomy of attacks, analyzes mitigation strategies, and proposes a secure system architecture tailored to the future AAM ecosystem. The paper also highlights key threat vectors, including Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming/spoofing, ATC radio frequency misuse, attacks on TCAS and ADS-B, possible backdoor via Electronic Flight Bag (EFB), new vulnerabilities introduced by aircraft automation and connectivity, and risks from flight management system (FMS) software, database and cloud services. Finally, this paper describes emerging defense techniques against these attacks, and open technical problems to address toward better defense mechanisms.

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Mahyar Ghazanfari, Iman Sharifi, Peng Wei, Noah Dahle, Abel Diaz Gonzalez, Austin Coursey, Bryce Bjorkman, Cailani Lemieux-Mack, Robert Canady, Abenezer Taye, Bryan C. Ward, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Gautam Biswas, Maheed H. Ahmed, Hyeong Tae Kim, Mahsa Ghasemi, Vijay Gupta, Filippos Fotiadis, Ufuk Topcu, Junchi Lu, Alfred Chen, Abdul Kareem Ras, Nischal Aryal, Amer Ibrahim, Amir Shirkhodaie, Heber Herencia-Zapana, Saqib Hasan, Isaac Amundson. 2026-01-20. A Survey of Security Challenges and Solutions for Advanced Air Mobility and eVTOL Aircraft. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14415

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