WHITEPAPER | April 19, 2022

Reverse Engineering of DAL-A Certified Avionics: Collins’ Pro Line Fusion—AFD-3700

Ruben Santamarta, IOActive Security Researcher, presents a highly technical and detailed look into reverse engineering the DAL-A Certified Avionics: Collins’ Pro Line Fusion—AFD-3700.

Modern avionic systems are designed according to the Integrated Modular Avionics concept. Under this paradigm, safety-certified avionic applications and non-critical airborne software share the same computing platform but are running at different partitions. In this context the underlying safety-critical certified RTOS provides the logical isolation, which should prevent unintended interactions between software with different criticalities.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the architecture and vulnerabilities found on the Adaptive Flight Display component of the Collins Aerospace’s Pro Line Fusion solution. This integrated avionics system, deployed both in military and commercial aircraft, is certified as DO-178B/C Design Assurance Level A.