Analysis of the GPS Spoofing Vulnerability in the Drone 3DR Solo

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 51782 - 51789
• Main Authors: Arteaga, Sandra Perez, Hernandez, Luis Alberto Martinez, Perez, Gabriel Sanchez, Orozco, Ana Lucila Sandoval, Villalba, Luis Javier Garcia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Aircraft; Airport security; Airports; Automation; Communications systems; Companies; Drone aircraft; Drone vehicles; Drones; Exploitation; Global Positioning System; GPS; GPS spoofing; hijack; Maldrone; Manufacturing engineering; Robotics; Robots; Robustness; Security; Security systems; Spoofing; UAV; Unmanned aerial vehicles; vulnerabilities
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2911526

At present, the boom in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been increasing in recent years, placing them in an important way in the commercial market. The use of UAV in the daily tasks of industry, commerce or as entertainment for children and adults becomes more recurrent. Each of the UAVs has a specific task, depending on the technologies that are provided, in addition to their basic functions with which they were manufactured. However, in most cases the security of these UAVs is not usually taken into account since some of them are inexpensive and do not have a robust security system that protects the data they send or receive for their operation, that can cause its communication system or the operating system that controls its basic functions of flight, landing, among others, to be compromised. These computer attacks could cause physical or moral harm to people around the same operator of the UAV because they could steal information related to the locations they have visited, or intercept images or videos taken by the UAV. This paper shows the exploitation of GPS vulnerability in the commercial drone of the company 3D Robotics, this vulnerability can cause a malicious user to have control of their autonomy, and carry out illicit activities, such as overflying in spaces not allowed as an airport and private areas. The exploitation of this vulnerability is important to make known that the UAVs should have a more robust security system and also give importance to the security of GPS since the only one that has security is the military GPS.