SoK - Security and Privacy in the Age of Drones: Threats, Challenges, Solution Mechanisms, and Scientific Gaps

TL;DR

This survey paper reviews the evolving threats, detection, and mitigation techniques for drones, highlighting scientific gaps and proposing future research directions in security and privacy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of societal threats, detection methods, and scientific gaps in drone security and privacy, integrating academic and industrial perspectives.

Findings

Detection methods vary in effectiveness based on environmental factors.

Disabling techniques include jamming and physical capture with varying success.

Scientific gaps exist in reliable detection and non-invasive disablement methods.

Abstract

The evolution of drone technology in the past nine years since the first commercial drone was introduced at CES 2010 has caused many individuals and businesses to adopt drones for various purposes. We are currently living in an era in which drones are being used for pizza delivery, the shipment of goods, and filming, and they are likely to provide an alternative for transportation in the near future. However, drones also pose a significant challenge in terms of security and privacy within society (for both individuals and organizations), and many drone related incidents are reported on a daily basis. These incidents have called attention to the need to detect and disable drones used for malicious purposes and opened up a new area of research and development for academia and industry, with a market that is expected to reach $1.85 billion by 2024. While some of the knowledge used to detect UAVs has been adopted for drone detection, new methods have been suggested by industry and academia alike to deal with the challenges associated with detecting the very small and fast flying objects. In this paper, we describe new societal threats to security and privacy created by drones, and present academic and industrial methods used to detect and disable drones. We review methods targeted at areas that restrict drone flights and analyze their effectiveness with regard to various factors (e.g., weather, birds, ambient light, etc.). We present the challenges arising in areas that allow drone flights, introduce the methods that exist for dealing with these challenges, and discuss the scientific gaps that exist in this area. Finally, we review methods used to disable drones, analyze their effectiveness, and present their expected results. Finally, we suggest future research directions.