Un-Rocking Drones: Foundations of Acoustic Injection Attacks and Recovery Thereof

Abstract

—Drones equipped with microelectromechanical sys- tem (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors are exposed to acoustic injection attacks. These attacks resonate sensors, compromising their output and causing drones to crash. Several mitigation strategies have been proposed; however, they are limited in terms of practicality as they cannot make the drone fly t o its planned destination in the event of an attack. To remedy this, we aim at recovering the compromised sensor values for the practical mitigation of acoustic injection attacks. To achieve this, we first c onstructed a r ealistic testbed and delved into the implications of resonant MEMS sensors on drones. We discovered that sampling jitter, which refers to the inconsistent timing delay in retrieving sensor values, has a significant i m pact o n d r one c r ashes d u ring t h e a t tack. Note that while any real-time system needs to satisfy its real-time