Security Vulnerabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Countermeasures: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Drones present a novel airborne platform for new commercial and consumer tasks. Due to their increasing use, security analysis has become necessary. In this paper, we present a collection of fatal attacks, minor observations and associated security vulnerabilities for DJI Phantom 4 Pro(P4P) and Parrot Bebop 2 drones. We also propose some countermeasures to bolster the security of the analyzed drones. In addition to this, we provided a brief overview of the system and embedded architecture of these vehicles. Although DJI has tried to improve security by introducing radio communication and partially encrypted firmware, the P4P still remains vulnerable to GPS spoofing, jamming and other vulnerabilities through DJI-SDK has been exposed in our experimental study. In contrast, Bebop drones are more vulnerable to wireless attacks and we have experimentally validated this for Bebop 2 drone.