IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015 - 17
LEADING EDGE
Donna A. Dulo
Unmanned Aircraft: The Rising
Risk of Hostile Takeover
he use of unmanned
aircraft also known
as drones is increasing in U.S. national
a irspace and the
numbers will rise exponentially
once the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) formally opens up
the skies to drones in the next
few years. The result will be the
addition of tens of thousands of
unmanned aircraft in the sky, in
addition to the ever increasing
manned aircraft traffic, resulting in
significant safety concerns.
A threat to safety that is commonly overlooked when operating an unmanned aircraft is the
threat of a hostile takeover. A hostile third party can wreak havoc in
the skies with a malicious drone
traversing the airspace with ominous intentions. Whether of portentous terrorist origins or merely
a young experimenter testing their
technical prowess, a third party
controlled drone can work its way
into the intake of a jetliner potentially bringing it down, or negotiate
its way across the skies, ultimately crashing on innocent bystand-
A System of Systems
Aerial Target
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2015.2461196
Date of publication: 16 September 2015
An unmanned aircraft is, in engineering terms a "system of systems." This means that it is a
T
september 2015
Embedded Systems Threats
Wireless Hack Threats
GPS Spoofing
oofing
ers. The range of potential damage
and human injury is considerable.
Unfor tunately, the information
assurance and security aspects of
unmanned aircraft have taken a
back seat to privacy and myriad
safety concerns. Yet information
assurance and security in drones
is a safety as well as privacy threat,
since a hostile unmanned aircraft
can be hard to trace, track, and ultimately control.
∕
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Malware/Viruses/Worms
Signal Jamming
Signa
combination of various inherently
complex systems, all operating in
tandem to perform a given aerial
task. From the aircraft itself to the
ground station as well as GPS satellites and communication networks,
the unmanned aircraft system is
a highly complex computationally
and electronically based structure,
manifesting the same vulnerabilities as other computational and
electronic network based systems
as well as presenting unique vulnerabilities that are ripe for exploitation from dangerous emerging
threats. In addition, being a system
of systems, the unmanned aircraft
system is at risk from multiple or
17
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