Marine radars have established the foundation for safe navigation by enabling real-time monitoring of vessel positions, obstacles, and coastlines, thereby facilitating collision avoidance and supporting bridge operations. However, new risks are emerging as ships continue to become more digitized and interlinked. Radars are currently integrated with ECDIS, AIS, and other networked devices and cannot be viewed as a simple digital ecosystem.
The MDPI (2022) survey revealed that digitalisation has increased the cyber-attack surface across maritime assets, even though it enhances operational efficiency.
However, as mentioned in the arXiv (2025) review, the maritime cybersecurity domain has been insufficiently surveyed to date, which exposes vital systems, such as marine radar, to modern cyberattacks.
In today’s digitised shipping world, radar systems are no longer just collision-avoidance tools – they’ve become cyber-attack targets. Here’s why and how we must defend them with maritime-tailored intrusion detection.
Why are Marine Radar Systems (MRS) Vulnerable?
Marine Radar Systems (MRS) comprise several interconnected components, including the antenna, signal processing unit, display console, and integration interfaces with bridge systems such as ECDIS, AIS, and GPS. While these connections enhance situational awareness, they also expand the digital attack surface. Any point where data is exchanged, radar images are transmitted, or sensors are synchronized can become a potential vulnerability. Marine radar is a vital tool for collision avoidance and navigation; however, its reliance on standard maritime network protocols and open communication architectures has increased its susceptibility to cyberattacks. As highlighted in the book Maritime Cybersecurity, regulatory initiatives such as IMO Resolution MSC.428(98) now require shipping enterprises to incorporate cyber risk management into their safety frameworks. This is especially important, as MRS and other bridge mechanisms are recognized as potential cyber-physical vulnerabilities, necessitating the implementation of specialized safeguards.
Key Protocols and Attack Types
Maritime radar systems utilize specialized communication protocols to exchange radar data, control commands, and diagnostic information among interconnected devices. For instance, ASTERIX CAT-240 is commonly used for exchanging radar image data, while proprietary protocols like BR24 transmit image, control, and report data over dedicated channels. However, as discussed in “Exploring Anomaly Detection for Marine Radar Systems,” these protocols often lack confidentiality, integrity, and authentication mechanisms, making them vulnerable to malicious interference.
Attackers can exploit these weaknesses to manipulate radar images, altering them, introducing fake echoes, moving real targets, or disrupting scan coordination, which can mislead operators and compromise navigational safety. Another research article categorizes maritime threats as spoofing, denial-of-service (DoS), and data manipulation attacks, noting that radar networks, due to their continuous data flow, are especially susceptible to DoS flooding and packet injection attacks targeting radar communication streams.
Maritime-Specific IDS Approach
Conventional intrusion detection systems (IDS) struggle to address the unique characteristics of maritime networks, which rely on specialized protocols for radar, sensor feeds, and control signals. Effective IDS solutions for maritime environments must be tailored to understand radar traffic, operational timing, and vessel dynamics. As highlighted in recent literature, network- and host-based IDSs are widely recognized, but their application in marine systems remains largely underexplored. This gap is due to the proprietary nature of shipboard communication networks and the scarcity of datasets required for model training.
A maritime-specific IDS architecture can be conceptualized as consisting of four distinct layers of analysis:
- A rule-based IDS applies timing rules, such as comparing radar antenna rotation speeds with packet arrival times, to detect anomalies.
- A traffic-based IDS monitors expected traffic patterns in radar modes, flagging scanline irregularities or abnormal data bursts.
- A machine-learning-based IDS establishes behavioral baselines for vessel traffic and network activity, assigning anomaly scores to flag deviations.
- An application-based IDS compares radar image content with sensor data, such as Speed Over Ground (SOG) and Course Over Ground (COG), to detect image manipulation.
Another study highlights that human factors, such as insufficient crew training and limited situational awareness, are significant gaps in detection, underscoring the need for automated and adaptive maritime IDS solutions.
Practical Implications and Recommendations
Ship operators, radar equipment manufacturers, and cybersecurity providers must work together to establish a robust, layered defense strategy that enhances the resilience of Marine Radar Systems (MRS) and integrated bridge operations. This includes implementing maritime-specific IDS infrastructures, developing custom detection policies aligned with radar communication standards (such as ASTERIX and BR24), and maintaining continuous surveillance of radar systems for abnormal conditions.
According to ICS Guidelines, vessel operators should integrate cyber risk management into their Safety Management Systems (SMS) in accordance with IMO Resolution MSC.428(98). Manufacturers, meanwhile, are encouraged to adopt secure-by-design principles and ensure radar firmware and control interfaces can authenticate and verify data integrity.
Cybersecurity solutions specialized in Maritime play a key role by alerting crews to recognize suspicious radar activity and conducting incident response drills. Ultimately, adhering to IMO and ICS frameworks, along with deploying domain-specific IDS, provides a practical roadmap for mitigating radar-focused cyber threats in the maritime sector.
Concluding Thoughts
Marine Radar Systems (MRS) have long been essential for safe navigation, helping vessels avoid collisions and maintain situational awareness. However, as ships become increasingly digital and interconnected, new cyber risks threaten these systems. Common vulnerabilities include weak radar protocols, such as ASTERIX and BR24, that lack authentication and encryption, leaving transmissions exposed to spoofing, image manipulation, and denial-of-service attacks.
There is now a clear need for a maritime-specific Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Unlike conventional IDS solutions, it must understand radar timing, vessel behavior, and specialized marine protocols to effectively detect and respond to threats. Multi-layered detection strategies, including rule-based, traffic-based, machine-learning, and application-level approaches, can help identify abnormal radar traffic, false echoes, and image tampering.
To build resilience, operators, manufacturers, and cybersecurity experts must work together. Following IMO and ICS cyber guidelines, implementing radar systems with cybersecurity in mind, and help crews to recognize anomalies are vital steps. As maritime technology evolves, safeguarding radar integrity will remain crucial for ensuring safe and cyber-secure navigation.
