Exploring security vulnerabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles

TLDR

UAVs are increasingly popular, ranging from inexpensive recreational models to costly professional units used in critical missions, yet the assumption that professional UAVs are highly secure is challenged. The demo aims to refute this assumption by exposing security gaps in police‑operated UAVs. The authors discuss countermeasures to enhance the security and resilience of professional UAVs. They demonstrate that the identified vulnerabilities enable a Man‑in‑the‑Middle attack and command injection to control a compromised UAV.

Abstract

We are currently observing a significant increase in the popularity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), popularly also known by their generic term drones. This is not only the case for recreational UAVs, that one can acquire for a few hundred dollars, but also for more sophisticated ones, namely professional UAVs, whereby the cost can reach several thousands of dollars. These professional UAVs are known to be largely employed in sensitive missions such as monitoring of critical infrastructures and operations by the police force. Given these applications, and in contrast to what we have been seeing for the case of recreational UAVs, one might assume that professional UAVs are strongly resilient to security threats. In this demo we prove such an assumption wrong by presenting the security gaps of a professional UAV, which is used for critical operations by police forces around the world. We demonstrate how one can exploit the identified security vulnerabilities, perform a Man-in-the-Middle attack, and inject control commands to interact with the compromised UAV. In addition, we discuss appropriate countermeasures to help improving the security and resilience of professional UAVs.