A retrospective on DISPEED -- Leveraging heterogeneity in a drone swarm for IDS execution

TL;DR

This paper reviews the DISPEED project, which exploits heterogeneity in drone swarms to deploy resource-efficient network intrusion detection systems, involving characterization of IDS on various embedded platforms and development of context-aware deployment strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a two-phase approach for characterizing and mapping IDS implementations to heterogeneous drone platforms, optimizing security deployment in drone swarms.

Findings

Identified 36 relevant IDS implementations across three embedded platforms.

Developed strategies for selecting the most suitable IDS based on context.

Published multiple international conference and journal papers.

Abstract

Swarms of drones are gaining more and more autonomy and efficiency during their missions. However, security threats can disrupt their missions' progression. To overcome this problem, Network Intrusion Detection Systems ((N)IDS) are promising solutions to detect malicious behavior on network traffic. However, modern NIDS rely on resource-hungry machine learning techniques, that can be difficult to deploy on a swarm of drones. The goal of the DISPEED project is to leverage the heterogeneity (execution platforms, memory) of the drones composing a swarm to deploy NIDS. It is decomposed in two phases: (1) a characterization phase that consists in characterizing various IDS implementations on diverse embedded platforms, and (2) an IDS implementation mapping phase that seeks to develop selection strategies to choose the most relevant NIDS depending on the context. On the one hand, the characterization phase allowed us to identify 36 relevant IDS implementations on three different embedded platforms: a Raspberry Pi 4B, a Jetson Xavier, and a Pynq-Z2. On the other hand, the IDS implementation mapping phase allowed us to design both standalone and distributed strategies to choose the best NIDSs to deploy depending on the context. The results of the project have led to three publications in international conferences, and one publication in a journal.