Systematic Cybersecurity Risk Analysis of European Rail Traffic Management System

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 10 Jun 2026] Systematic Cybersecurity Risk Analysis of European Rail Traffic Management System Kacper Darowski, Sebastian N. Peters, Lukas Lautenschlager European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a widely adopted standard unifying train management in the EU. While the standard allows for use cases like fully autonomous driving, cybersecurity has been an afterthought. Risk analysis enables the systematic assessment and prioritization of threats and mitigations. To date, it remains unclear which threats are most significant in ERTMS. This study systematically models components of ERTMS and analyzes their security in light of threats identified in the underlying technologies. The results suggest a concerning state of ERTMS, despite its critical role in railway safety. The use of legacy standards like EuroBalises and GSM-Railway (GSM-R) introduces vulnerabilities that persist across minimal ERTMS implementations, deployments incorporating various optional safety measures, and prospective future evolutions of the system, e.g., adopting Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS). Fully transitioning to European Train Control System (ETCS) level 2 was identified as the most significant measure for advancing ERTMS cybersecurity. The results indicate that a shift of ERTMS toward security is required to ensure availability and safe operation. While the chosen methodology proved its feasibility and shows remaining weaknesses of ERTMS, future work is needed to develop railway-centric adaptations to improve the quantification and evaluation of the computed risks. Comments: Extended version of the paper accepted at ARES 2026 CPRA. First three authors contributed equally to this work Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2606.11839 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.11839v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.11839 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Sebastian N. Peters [view email] [v1] Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:18:19 UTC (29 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)