UAV weaknesses against deauthentication based hijacking attacks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are more important than ever before and we’re using it daily for agriculture, photo making, film industry, Search & Rescue, long range cable quality control, Geo Informatics, cartography, and state use (including border protection, disaster recovery and the military). Most of the UAV/UAS devices are using digital communication protocols nowadays, especially the IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area of Network for the cheaper and middle price UAV/UAS. Unfortunately, the protocols specified by the previously mentioned IEEE standard are vulnerable against some attacks. This research paper proposes a method that can interrupt the normal operation of the UAV/UAS that are using the IEEE 802.11 protocol and hijack the interrupted UAV/UAS permanently. For this method, deauthentication attack has been performed against the UAV/UASs. The attack vector is capable of denying the communication between the UAV and the control station. With sufficient prior knowledge it is possible to hijack the UAV that communicates on a 802.11 based protocol. Deauthentication based attacks are much more sophisticated than for example traditional electronic jamming, because the target can be precisely chosen and the attack will not interrupt other devices using the same communication method. The research has unfortunately some limitations in equipment, measurements conducted only in three different types of UAVs from three price categories, but in the future the authors would like to extend the range of UAVs. From this three UAVs two are hijackable by this method and the third should also be hijackable with some modifications. This research could be a base later for UAV/UAS counter measure systems for the safety of all of us.