Towards a trusted unmanned aerial system using blockchain for the protection of critical infrastructure

With the exponential growth in the number of vital infrastructures such as nuclear plants and transport and distribution networks, these systems have become more susceptible to coordinated cyberattacks. One of the effective approaches used to strengthen the security of these infrastructures is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance and data collection. However, UAVs themselves are prone to attacks on their collected sensor data. Recently, blockchain (BC) has been proposed as a revolutionary technology that can be integrated within Internet of things (IoT) to provide a desired level of security and privacy. However, the integration of BC within IoT networks, where UAV's sensors constitute a major component, is extremely challenging. The major contribution of this study is twofold:(1) survey the security issues for UAV's collected sensor data, define the security requirements for such systems, and identify ways to address them; and (2) propose a novel BC-based solution to ensure the security of and the trust between the UAVs and their relevant ground control stations. Our implementation results and analysis show that using UAVs as means for protecting critical infrastructure is greatly enhanced through the utilization of trusted BC-based unmanned aerial systems.

Automated summary

With the increasing number of vital infrastructures, such as nuclear plants and transport networks, the risk of coordinated cyberattacks has grown. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used to strengthen the security of these infrastructures, but they are also vulnerable to attacks on their collected sensor data. Blockchain has been proposed as a revolutionary technology to enhance security and privacy within the Internet of Things (IoT), but integrating blockchain into IoT networks where UAV sensors are a major component is challenging. This study surveys the security issues for UAVs' collected sensor data, defines security requirements, and proposes a blockchain-based solution to ensure security and trust between UAVs and ground control stations. The implementation results show that using trusted blockchain-based UAV systems greatly enhances the protection of critical infrastructure.