A cyber-resilient open architecture for drone control

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming important tools in both military and civilian sectors. However, the prevalent use of monolithic architectures in contemporary platforms limits the swift integration of new features and significantly hampers the adaptability of UAVs to an ever-changing operational environment. Furthermore, this constantly evolving landscape highlights the inherent complexity of assessing drone safety and security since this process requires managing multiple and rapidly changing variables. Therefore, it is imperative to adopt an open system approach that relies on microservices and virtualization in order to overcome the limits of traditional drone architectures. This study presents a new method that involves breaking down the UAV monolithic system into a network of separate and virtualized components, each holding a single responsibility and designed according to the Open System Architecture (OSA) principle. Moreover, this work proposes a novel cyber-resilience model to determine cyber threats and assess their impact on the system. This approach leverages NIST 800-53, MITRE ATT&CK, STPA-Sec, and Attack Graph in order to identify the sequence of malicious actions that can lead to a specific hazardous scenario. Lastly, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel architectural paradigm by developing a software-in-the-loop simulation testbed for fast prototyping new features and validating the results of the cyber-resilience model.