UAVs Path Deviation Attacks: Survey and Research Challenges

TL;DR

This survey reviews UAV path deviation attacks, classifies them based on flight modes and configurations, and highlights significant research gaps, especially in securing FPV and GNSS+ modes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of UAV path deviation attacks and identifies key research challenges and gaps in current defense strategies.

Findings

Spoofing is the main threat in GNSS-based UAVs.

Redundancy, like vision chips or multiple UAVs, enhances spoofing defense.

Limited research exists on securing FPV and GNSS+ UAV modes.

Abstract

Recently, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are employed for a plethora of civilian applications. Such flying vehicles can accomplish tasks under the pilot's eyesight within the range of a remote controller, or autonomously according to a certain pre-loaded path configuration. Different path deviation attacks can be performed by malicious users against UAVs. We classify such attacks and the relative defenses based on the UAV's flight mode, i.e., (i) First Person View (FPV), (ii) civilian Global Navigation Satellite System based (GNSS), and (iii) GNSS "plus" auxiliary technologies (GNSS+), and on the multiplicity, i.e., (i) Single UAV, and (ii) Multiple UAVs. We found that very little has been done to secure the FPV flight mode against path deviation. In GNSS mode, spoofing is the most worrisome attack. The best defense against spoofing seems to be redundancy, such as adding vision chips to single UAV or using multiple arranged UAVs. No specific attacks and defenses have been found in literature for GNSS+ or for UAVs moving in group without a pre-ordered arrangement. These aspects require further investigation.