Defense Techniques Against Cyber Attacks on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones serve a wide range of applications from surveillance to combat missions. UAVs carry, collect, or communicate sensitive information which becomes a target for the attacks. Securing the communication network between the operator and the UAV is therefore crucial. So far, the networks used in most UAV applications are static, which allows more time and opportunity for the adversary to perform cyber-attacks on the UAV. In this paper we propose to study Moving Target Defense (MTD) technique against cyber-attacks on the drones including wireless network encryption and intrusion detection system. MTD technique change the static nature of the systems to increase both the difficulty and the cost (effort, time, and resources) of mounting attacks. For illustration purpose, a well-known cyberattack is performed on a popular commercial drone and results are presented to show the network vulnerabilities, damages caused due to the attacks and defense techniques to prevent the attacks.