Spoofing attack of drone

Abstract

Nowadays, the increasing application of drones makes our lives more and more convenient. Various tasks such as: surveillance, emergency rescue, aerial photography, etc. can be accomplished by drones now. In China, some express companies have begun to use drones to do the deliveries. There are two main ways to navigate a drone. The first way is to control drones through a remote controller. As a person is needed, sometimes, it is not a very profitable way. The other way is setting the destination for drones, and it will get to the destination automatically with the help of positioning services. This way can reduce the labor cost as the drones travel automatically. In preset, most positioning services is provided by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The global positioning system (GPS) is the most widely used GNSS. But it is known that civilian GPS signals are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks. In all of these attacks, the GPS spoofing is the most threatening one. The spoofing attack can mislead the victim into thinking it is in a position which is different from its real position. As the application demand of drones is increasing, the drones are likely to be victims of the spoofing attack. The 5th generation wireless systems, abbreviated 5G, is believed to be able to provide high quality and low delay positioning services with its features like ultra-dense networks, MIMO technology, device to device communications, etc. The observed time difference of arrival (OTDOA) positioning, which has been introduced to long-term evolution network, is a promising way to provide positioning services. In this work, the possibility of the spoofing attack on several drones which are keep in touch with each other and know each other relative positions is studied. The possible spoofed location with different number of spoofing signals is investigated. The feasibility study of spoofing attack on an OTDOA navigated drone and the simulation of it are included. Finally, some countermeasures against these attacks are proposed.