A Container-based DoS Attack-Resilient Control Framework for Real-Time UAV Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a container-based framework called ContainerDrone that enhances the resilience of real-time UAV systems against DoS attacks by controlling critical resources and switching to safety modes upon attack detection.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel containerized control framework for UAVs that defends against DoS attacks by resource management and attack detection, improving system robustness.

Findings

Effective defense against DoS attacks demonstrated in experiments.

Resource management mechanisms successfully limit attack impact.

Prototype UAV system validated with real-world hardware.

Abstract

The Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) sector is fast-expanding. Protection of real-time UAV applications against malicious attacks has become an urgent problem that needs to be solved. Denial-of-service (DoS) attack aims to exhaust system resources and cause important tasks to miss deadlines. DoS attack may be one of the common problems of UAV systems, due to its simple implementation. In this paper, we present a software framework that offers DoS attack-resilient control for real-time UAV systems using containers: ContainerDrone. The framework provides defense mechanisms for three critical system resources: CPU, memory, and communication channel. We restrict attacker's access to CPU core set and utilization. Memory bandwidth throttling limits attacker's memory usage. By simulating sensors and drivers in the container, a security monitor constantly checks DoS attacks over communication channels. Upon the detection of a security rule violation, the framework switches to the safety controller to mitigate the attack. We implemented a prototype quadcopter with commercially off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and open-source software. Our experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed framework defending against various DoS attacks.