A Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Urban Air Mobility Potential Cyberattacks and Authentication Models: A Way Forward

• Main Authors: Mahmoud, Aminu Abdulkadir, Ramli, Sofia Najwa, Mohd Ariff, Mohd Aifaa, Chai Wen, Chuah, Rahim, Nordiana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
• Online Access: http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/12426/1/J17910_427936e3075b5837b6c72ac6e473e9b7.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/12426/

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that operates without an onboard human pilot. It can be remotely controlled through a ground control station (GCS), remote control, or onboard computer programs. The elements onboard use a network of sensors to communicate with GCS via a wireless link and thus make the system susceptible to various cyber-attacks. These have magnified concerns, especially in recent years, due to the increased adoption of drones across multiple sectors such as governments, industries, businesses, and transport. Given the paramount need to ensure availability, integrity, and confidentiality, securing these systems is crucial. The attacks may present in forms such as jamming, denial of service, signal attack, eavesdropping, hijacking, man-in-the-middle, intrusion, and malicious application, among others, and these attacks could be mitigated using an effective authentication model. This research reviews several such models, majorly cryptographic, lightweight, and blockchain-based, proposed by different scholars. Considering the importance of blockchain, this research grouped these authentication techniques into two: blockchain and non-blockchain-based. The study shows that all the reviewed authentication techniques have certain limitations, indicating the need for enhancement. Finally, this review identifies the need to consider UAV's peculiarities, operating environment, communication channels, energy consumption (battery life), and blockchain technology to formulate an optimal authentication model.