OpenSky Report 2018: Assessing the Integrity of Crowdsourced Mode S and ADS-B Data

Abstract

Air traffic tracking platforms such as the OpenSky Network use crowdsourcing to track air traffic world wide. While crowdsourcing allows for unprecedented coverage, it comes with challenges concerning the integrity of the data. More specifically, by delegating the data collection task to a mostly unknown group of individuals, the network becomes vulnerable to data integrity breaches by inexperienced or malicious actors. Users might - intentionally or not - send faulty or fake data to the tracker and in this way threaten the integrity of the information provided by the network. In this paper, we provide unique insights into the data integrity challenges we faced during 6 years of operating the OpenSky Network. We analyze the different types of integrity breaches and discuss methods to detect and filter faulty data.