Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences of Tunis, University of El Manar, Tunis 1068, Tunisia.
Robotics and Internet of Things Lab, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh 12435, Saudi Arabia.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Apr 27;21(9):3049. doi: 10.3390/s21093049.
Unmanned aerial systems (UAVs) are dramatically evolving and promoting several civil applications. However, they are still prone to many security issues that threaten public safety. Security becomes even more challenging when they are connected to the Internet as their data stream is exposed to attacks. Unmanned traffic management (UTM) represents one of the most important topics for small unmanned aerial systems for beyond-line-of-sight operations in controlled low-altitude airspace. However, without securing the flight path exchanges between drones and ground stations or control centers, serious security threats may lead to disastrous situations. For example, a predefined flight path could be easily altered to make the drone perform illegal operations. Motivated by these facts, this paper discusses the security issues for UTM's components and addresses the security requirements for such systems. Moreover, we propose UTM-Chain, a lightweight blockchain-based security solution using hyperledger fabric for UTM of low-altitude UAVs which fits the computational and storage resources limitations of UAVs. Moreover, UTM-Chain provides secure and unalterable traffic data between the UAVs and their ground control stations. The performance of the proposed system related to transaction latency and resource utilization is analyzed by using cAdvisor. Finally, the analysis of security aspects demonstrates that the proposed UTM-Chain scheme is feasible and extensible for the secure sharing of UAV data.
无人机系统 (UAV) 正在迅速发展，并推动了许多民用应用。然而，它们仍然容易受到许多威胁公共安全的安全问题的影响。当它们连接到互联网时，由于其数据流容易受到攻击，安全性就变得更加具有挑战性。无人交通管理 (UTM) 是在受控低空空域进行超视距操作的小型无人机系统的最重要课题之一。然而，如果不保护无人机与地面站或控制中心之间的飞行路径交换，严重的安全威胁可能会导致灾难性的情况。例如，预设的飞行路径可能很容易被篡改，使无人机执行非法操作。鉴于这些事实，本文讨论了 UTM 的组件的安全问题，并解决了此类系统的安全要求。此外，我们提出了 UTM-Chain，这是一种使用 hyperledger fabric 的轻量级基于区块链的安全解决方案，适用于低空无人机的 UTM，符合无人机的计算和存储资源限制。此外，UTM-Chain 提供了无人机与其地面控制站之间安全且不可篡改的交通数据。使用 cAdvisor 分析了与交易延迟和资源利用相关的系统性能。最后，安全方面的分析表明，所提出的 UTM-Chain 方案对于安全共享无人机数据是可行和可扩展的。
