Survey of UAV Security Authentication and Cryptography Protocols

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are gaining significant attention because of the strategic and financial information and value involved in aerial applications, as well as the sensitive data collected through embedded sensors. UAVs are rapidly developing in various fields and find widespread utility in military applications for effective target tracking, battlefield surveillance, radiation monitoring, and sports. UAVs are useful and advantageous, but they can also be attacked by a variety of techniques, including jamming, fuzzing, false data injection, and zero attacks. Researchers were looking on robust security mechanisms to protect UAVs from attackers in order to combat such security risks. However, there is a large number of vulnerabilities in designed protocols that hackers could take advantage of. For the identification and addressing of those vulnerabilities and weaknesses, it is becoming highly important to study and analyze current security protocols that are used in the UAVs. In this study, a thorough survey will be introduced on authentication and cryptography that are used in the UAV protocols, as well as describing architecture, procedure, and security of Micro Aerial Vehicle Link (MavLink) protocol. We will explain as well the cryptography and authentication approach that has been developed by the use of the MavLink protocol. Index Terms— UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, MavLink, Zero attack.