Don't steal my drone: Catching attackers with an unmanned aerial vehicle honeypot

Abstract

The increased utilization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in both personal as well as commercial and public safety scenarios has also opened the door to adversaries. In more details, such malicious activities may include the hijacking of the UAV (and its cargo), the theft of private information stored in the device, etc. In this paper, we introduce the idea of a honeypot that is specifically designed for the protection of UAVs. The honeypot, which is also capable of running on small portable devices, e.g., a Raspberry Pi, emulates a number of UAV-specific and UAV-tailored protocols, making it possible to lure adversaries into attacking it. Our system can assist into detecting active attackers in a certain area as well as into shedding light into the adversaries' techniques for compromising UAVs.