International. The growing popularity of using personal and commercial drones in populated areas poses significant risks to both society and drones due to the lack of additional technology that is required to protect both parties from each other.
The lack of assistive technology could be exploited by malicious entities for cyberattacks, terrorism, crime and privacy threats and also to attack drones while flying for a legitimate purpose, according to a new research report from the University of the Negev Ben-Gurion (BGU) and Fujitsu System Integration Laboratories Ltd.
The first comprehensive study on "Security and Privacy Challenges in the Age of Drones" evaluates 200 academic and industry techniques designed to detect and disable drones flying in restricted and unrestricted areas. Their findings coincide with the U.S. government's proposal to allow civilian drone flights. New safety rules that allow deliveries and other commercial uses in populated areas.
"Cutting-edge technology and declining drone prices made them accessible to individuals and organizations, but it has created new threats and recently led to an increase in drone-related incidents," says Ben Nassi, a PhD student in BGU's Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering (SISE) and a researcher at BGU's Cybersecurity Research Center. "There are many difficulties that the military, police departments and governments are trying to overcome as it is a recognized threat to critical infrastructure, operations and individuals."
The researchers examined different ways to detect drones in restricted areas for drones, including radars, RF scanners, thermal cameras, sound, and hybrids of these methods. However, they believe the biggest challenge is determining the purpose of the drone in unrestricted areas. For example, if a detected operator is using a drone to deliver a pizza, spy on someone in a shower, launch a cyberattack, or smuggle products.
"An open skies policy that allows drones to fly over populated areas represents a major challenge in terms of security and privacy within society," says Prof. Yuval Elovici, Ph.D. advisor to Ben Nassi, who is director of Deutsche Telekom's innovation labs. @BGU; director of the BGU Cyber Security Research Center, SISE faculty member and the Davide and Irene Sala Chair in Homeland Security Research.
"Attackers can disguise a cyberattack as a legitimate pizza delivery with drones hiding the hardware they use inside the pizza box. To illustrate, researchers from BGU and Fujitsu demonstrate an attack that explodes a pizza delivery to launch a cyber war against smart cities."
The researchers also demonstrated a new physical method to disable the drone's active tracking functionality, a new technology that was recently introduced by drone manufacturers and is based on computer vision algorithms.
"In an unrestricted area, we believe there is a large scientific gap and defined risks that can be exploited by terrorists to launch a cyberattack," says Nassi. "It is inevitable that drones will become more widespread, but we need to recognize that open skies policy presents multiple risks and that current solutions cannot be solved as a result of a major scientific gap in this area."
The researchers propose methods that allow the identification of flying drones, as well as registration, which is now a U.S. regulation. This includes dedicated techniques for authenticating drones and their operators. While in their previous study, the researchers demonstrated a new technique for detecting a spy plane, new methods must be developed to determine the purpose of a nearby drone.
Data Source Provider: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).
