Unlocking the Access to the Effects Induced by IEMI on a Civilian UAV

Abstract

Many reports have pointed out the potential use of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles in malicious activities against critical infrastructures. From radioactive material projection in Japan to pictures of classified areas, known events have motivated the development of neutralization techniques. The use of high power directed energy weapons (DEW) is one of them. In order to estimate the efficiency of this solution, it is mandatory to have an in-depth analysis of the effects induced by radiofrequency DEW on targeted devices. Many studies related to the effects of electromagnetic interference on electronic devices have been released. A recently proposed approach has shown to provide insight on the propagation of hardware effects to the software level on tested targets using a health monitoring software. In this paper, we propose to design and run arbitrary software on a locked target to gain access to the internal sensors and logs available in the device. Relevant effects were obtained, opening the possibility to both neutralization and hardening strategies as well as estimating the protection efficiency provided by such solution.