Investigation of Vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi Based Drones and Suggestion of Countermeasures.
Abstract
UAVs have proven to be resourceful time and again in various applications such as search and
rescue missions, agriculture, surveillance, communication among others. There has been an
increase in the purchase for the commercial drones by even hobbyists. The remote-control
system of these drones is typically based on Wi-Fi.
This reliance on Wi-Fi for control and communication in itself leaves the drones vulnerable to
a number of wireless attacks including but not limited to: Denial of Service and Man in the
Middle attacks.
This research dwelled on identifying the different vulnerabilities Wi-Fi based drones have
that make them increasingly vulnerable to Wi-Fi based attacks as well as coming up with
suggestions on how these vulnerabilities/loopholes can be addressed to increase their security.
To achieve the objectives of this research, we implemented a number of attack vectors on a
Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI) Phantom 3 to determine how easy it is to carry out these attacks
on a Wi-Fi based drone during flight as with regard to time it takes to perform the hack and
the threat level in the event the attack is successfully performed.
The thesis concludes with a discussion of various countermeasures which when implemented
would reduce the vulnerability of Wi-Fi based drones.