UTM-Chain: Blockchain-Based Secure Unmanned Traffic Management for Internet of Drones

Unmanned aerial systems (UAVs) are dramatically evolving and promoting several civil applications. However, they are still prone to many security issues that threaten public safety. Security becomes even more challenging when they are connected to the Internet as their data stream is exposed to attacks. Unmanned traffic management (UTM) represents one of the most important topics for small unmanned aerial systems for beyond-line-of-sight operations in controlled low-altitude airspace. However, without securing the flight path exchanges between drones and ground stations or control centers, serious security threats may lead to disastrous situations. For example, a predefined flight path could be easily altered to make the drone perform illegal operations. Motivated by these facts, this paper discusses the security issues for UTM's components and addresses the security requirements for such systems. Moreover, we propose UTM-Chain, a lightweight blockchain-based security solution using hyperledger fabric for UTM of low-altitude UAVs which fits the computational and storage resources limitations of UAVs. Moreover, UTM-Chain provides secure and unalterable traffic data between the UAVs and their ground control stations. The performance of the proposed system related to transaction latency and resource utilization is analyzed by using cAdvisor. Finally, the analysis of security aspects demonstrates that the proposed UTM-Chain scheme is feasible and extensible for the secure sharing of UAV data

MAVSec: Securing the MAVLink Protocol for Ardupilot/PX4 Unmanned Aerial Systems

The MAVLink is a lightweight communication protocol between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and ground control stations (GCSs). It defines a set of bi-directional messages exchanged between a UAV (aka drone) and a ground station. The messages carry out information about the UAV’s states and control commands sent from the ground station. However, the MAVLink protocol is not secure and has several vulnerabilities to different attacks that result in critical threats and safety concerns. Very few studies provided solutions to this problem. In this paper, we discuss the security vulnerabilities of the MAVLink protocol and propose MAVSec, a security-integrated mechanism for MAVLink that leverages the use of encryption algorithms to ensure the protection of exchanged MAVLink messages between UAVs and GCSs. To validate MAVSec, we implemented it in Ardupilot and evaluated the performance of different encryption algorithms (i.e. AES-CBC, AES-CTR, RC4 and ChaCha20) in terms of memory usage and CPU consumption. The experimental results show that ChaCha20 has a better performance and is more efficient than other encryption algorithms. Integrating ChaCha20 into MAVLink can guarantee its messages confidentiality, without affecting its performance, while occupying less memory and CPU consumption, thus, preserving memory and saving the battery for the resource-constrained droneinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Micro Air Vehicle Link (MAVLink) in a Nutshell: A Survey

The micro air vehicle link (MAVLink in short) is a communication protocol for unmanned systems (e.g., drones and robots). It specifies a comprehensive set of messages exchanged between unmanned systems and ground stations. This protocol is used in major autopilot systems, mainly ArduPilot and PX4, and provides powerful features not only for monitoring and controlling unmanned systems missions but also for their integration into the Internet. However, there is no technical survey and/or tutorial in the literature that presents these features or explains how to make use of them. Most of the references are online tutorials and basic technical reports, and none of them presents comprehensive and systematic coverage of the protocol. In this paper, we address this gap, and we propose an overview of the MAVLink protocol, the difference between its versions, and it is potential in enabling Internet connectivity to unmanned systems. We also discuss the security aspects of the MAVLink. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first technical survey and tutorial on the MAVLink protocol, which represents an important reference for unmanned systems users and developers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

UTM-Chain: Blockchain-Based Secure Unmanned Traffic Management for Internet of Drones

Unmanned aerial systems (UAVs) are dramatically evolving and promoting several civil applications. However, they are still prone to many security issues that threaten public safety. Security becomes even more challenging when they are connected to the Internet as their data stream is exposed to attacks. Unmanned traffic management (UTM) represents one of the most important topics for small unmanned aerial systems for beyond-line-of-sight operations in controlled low-altitude airspace. However, without securing the flight path exchanges between drones and ground stations or control centers, serious security threats may lead to disastrous situations. For example, a predefined flight path could be easily altered to make the drone perform illegal operations. Motivated by these facts, this paper discusses the security issues for UTM’s components and addresses the security requirements for such systems. Moreover, we propose UTM-Chain, a lightweight blockchain-based security solution using hyperledger fabric for UTM of low-altitude UAVs which fits the computational and storage resources limitations of UAVs. Moreover, UTM-Chain provides secure and unalterable traffic data between the UAVs and their ground control stations. The performance of the proposed system related to transaction latency and resource utilization is analyzed by using cAdvisor. Finally, the analysis of security aspects demonstrates that the proposed UTM-Chain scheme is feasible and extensible for the secure sharing of UAV data

Internet of drones security: Taxonomies, open issues, and future directions

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have recently become one of the most important technological breakthroughs. They have opened the horizon for a vast array of applications and paved the way for a diversity of innovative solutions. Integrating drones with the Internet has led to the emergence of a new paradigm named the Internet of Drones (IoD). Several works dealt with the security of the IoD, and various surveys have been published on this topic over the past few years. The existing surveys either have limited scope or offer partial coverage of cybersecurity countermeasures. To address these gaps, in this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey related to the cyber and physical security of IoD. Differently from many surveys that only provide a classification of attacks/threats, we also propose three taxonomies that are related to (1) the assets of drones, (2) attacks, and (3) countermeasures. The first taxonomy is a two-level classification of the assets in the IoD. The first level considers the coarse-grained assets, which refer to the IoD's tangible elements, and the second level considers the fine-grained assets, which refer to the elements composing the coarse-grained assets. Based on the asset classification, we propose a taxonomy of attacks targeting the coarse and fine-grained assets, which allows a finer level of granularity to identify threats, and thus ensure better security. Also, we evaluate the risk of cyber and physical attacks by introducing a novel concept, named Chain of Impact, which connects four types of impacts, namely, Direct, Mission, Drone, and Environment. We propose a taxonomy of technical and non-technical countermeasures according to two implementation phases: Pre-incident, and Post-incident (or recovery). The pre-incident countermeasures are further classified as: preventive and detective. In addition, we present the countermeasures along with their performance and limitations. Finally, open research challenges are identified and ranked according to the level of attention they should receive from the research community. Also, future research directions and suggestions are presented for the security of the IoD