Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are more important
than ever before and we’re using it daily for agriculture, photo making, film industry,
Search & Rescue, long range cable quality control, Geo Informatics, cartography, and
state use (including border protection, disaster recovery and the military). Most
of the UAV/UAS devices are using digital communication protocols nowadays, especially
the IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area of Network for the cheaper and middle price UAV/UAS.
Unfortunately, the protocols specified by the previously mentioned IEEE standard are
vulnerable against some attacks. This research paper proposes a method that can interrupt
the normal operation of the UAV/UAS that are using the IEEE 802.11 protocol and hijack
the interrupted UAV/UAS permanently. For this method, deauthentication attack has
been performed against the UAV/UASs. The attack vector is capable of denying the communication
between the UAV and the control station. With sufficient prior knowledge it is possible
to hijack the UAV that communicates on a 802.11 based protocol. Deauthentication based
attacks are much more sophisticated than for example traditional electronic jamming,
because the target can be precisely chosen and the attack will not interrupt other
devices using the same communication method. The research has unfortunately some limitations
in equipment, measurements conducted only in three different types of UAVs from three
price categories, but in the future the authors would like to extend the range of
UAVs. From this three UAVs two are hijackable by this method and the third should
also be hijackable with some modifications. This research could be a base later for
UAV/UAS counter measure systems for the safety of all of us.
