Mahsa Keshavarz, M. Gharib, Fatemeh Afghah, Jonathan Ashdown
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) are prone to several cyber-physical attacks, which decrease the performance of the network and may cause damage to the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or their surrounding environment. In this article, we propose UASTrustChain, a trust management framework based on Blockchain time-stamped series. We consider a system of models, consists of a number of autonomous UAVs, whose behaviors are regularly monitored by a set of distributed observers (DOs). Since most cyber attacks cause interruption in the operations of UAVs or deviation from their original path, the DOs keep track of the UAVs' behavior in terms of their trajectory, as well as the number of their successful tasks. The DOs calculate a relative trust score for each UAV and keep these scores in a transparent, reliable, secure and open ledger. This framework can detect UAVs' abnormal behavior in a real-time manner further to detect the compromised distributed observers, if any. The proposed framework could also distinguish abnormal activities due to real attacks from those caused by harsh environmental conditions. We evaluate the proposed framework for its functionality and accuracy by performing extensive simulation experiments. Our simulation results show that the proposed trust model can detect compromised distributed observers and fades their effect on the UAVs trust scores. Results further show the ability of the system in detecting malicious UAVs, which can be under various cyber-physical attacks.
Internet of things (IoT), mobile edge computing (MEC), and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) have attracted significant attention in both industry and academic research. By consolidating these technologies, IoT can be facilitated with improved connectivity, better data transmission, energy saving, and other advantages. However, the communication between these entities is subject to potential cyber threats. In addition, the integrity of the data must be maintained after storing into local storage. Blockchain is a data structure that supports features like pseudonymity, data integrity etc. This paper represents a blockchain based data acquisition process in which information is gathered from IoTs using UAV as a relay and is securely kept in blockchain at MEC server. In the proposed scheme, data are encrypted prior to transfer to MEC server with the assistance of a UAV. Upon receiving the data, MEC server validates the data and the identity of the sender. Successful validation is followed by stocking of the data into blockchain, subsequent to obtaining consent from the validators. Security analysis is conducted in order to show the feasibility of the proposed secure scheme. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed via simulation and implementation.
Abstract The paper considers the problem of distributed decision making in the robot swarm. The enhancement technique of the related study approach is proposed using the data transmission distance constraints and the weighted voting strategy. The decision making process is organized by means of distributed ledger usage. The information propagation through the swarm is implemented via spreading randomized rumor. The avoidance of routing in the swarm improves the overall energy efficiency of the system. The weighted voting transactions take into account the positions of the robots relating to the unknown objects or obstacles, as well as the voting history, which is stored in a distributed ledger
Junfei Qiu, David Grace, Guoru Ding, Junnan Yao · 5 authors
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are envisioned to be widely deployed as an integral component in the next generation cellular networks, where spectrum sharing between the aerial and terrestrial communication systems will play an important role. However, there exist significant security and privacy challenges due to the untrusted broadcast features and wireless transmission of the UAV networks. This article endeavors to resolve the security issues through proposing a novel privacy-preserving secure spectrum trading and sharing scheme based on blockchain technology. Specifically, from the operator's perspective, a pricing-based incentive mechanism is first introduced, in which a primary mobile network operator (MNO) leases its owned spectrum to a secondary UAV network in exchange for some revenue from the UAV operators. To address the potential security issues, a spectrum blockchain framework is then proposed to illustrate detailed operations of how the blockchain helps to improve the spectrum trading environment. Under this framework, a Stackelberg game is formulated to jointly maximize the profits of the MNO and the UAV operators considering uniform and nonuniform pricing schemes. Security assessment and numerical results confirm the security and efficiency of our schemes for spectrum sharing in UAV-assisted cellular networks.
In this paper, we propose an intrusion detection system (IDS) and Blockchain-based delivery framework, called DeliveryCoin, for drone-delivered services. The DeliveryCoin framework consists of four phases, including system initialization phase, creating the block, updating the blockchain, and intrusion detection phase. To achieve privacy-preservation, the DeliveryCoin framework employs hash functions and short signatures without random oracles and the Strong DiffieâHellman (SDH) assumption in bilinear groups. To achieve consensus inside the blockchain-based delivery platform, we introduce a UAV-aided forwarding mechanism, named pBFTF. We also propose an IDS system in each macro eNB (5G) for detecting self-driving network attacks as well as false transactions between self-driving nodes. Furthermore, extensive simulations are conducted, and results confirm the efficiency of our proposed DeliveryCoin framework in terms of latency of blockchain consensus and accuracy.
Abstract 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 BCâbased 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 BCâbased unmanned aerial systems.
Industry 4.0 has paved the way for a world where smart factories will automate and upgrade many processes through the use of some of the latest emerging technologies. One of such technologies is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which have evolved a great deal in the last years in terms of technology (e.g., control units, sensors, UAV frames) and have significantlyr educed their cost. UAVs can help industry in automatable and tedious tasks, like the ones performed on a regular basis for determining the inventory and for preserving item traceability. In such tasks, especially when it comes from untrusted third parties, it is essential to determine whether the collected information is valid or true. Likewise, ensuring data trustworthiness is a key issue in order to leverage Big Data analytics to supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. In such a case, blockchain, another Industry 4.0 technology that has become very popular in other fields like finance, has the potential to provide a higher level of transparency, security, trust and efficiency in the supply chain and enable the use of smart contracts. Thus, in this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a UAV-based system aimed at automating inventory tasks and keeping the traceability of industrial items attached to Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags. To confront current shortcomings, such a system is developed under a versatile, modular and scalable architecture aimed to reinforce cyber security and decentralization while fostering external audits and big data analytics. Therefore, the system uses a blockchain and a distributed ledger to store certain inventory data collected by UAVs, validate them, ensure their trustworthiness and make them available to the interested parties. In order to show the performance of the proposed system, different tests were performed in a real industrial warehouse, concluding that the system is able to obtain the inventory data really fast in comparison to traditional manual tasks, while being also able to estimate the position of the items when hovering over them thanks to their tag's signal strength. In addition, the performance of the proposed blockchain-based architecture was evaluated in different scenarios.
Alex Khawalid, Dan Acristinii, Hans van Toor, Eduardo CastellĂł Ferrer
Swarm Robotics (SR) faces a series of challenges impeding widespread adoption for real-world applications. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has shown it can solve a number of these challenges. An experiment was conducted to showcase the resolution of these challenges. A search and rescue mission was simulated using drones coupled with single board computers and several simulated agents. Inter-agent communications were facilitated through DLT in a completely decentralized network. A frontend interface was built to demonstrate the ease with which information can be extracted from the system. This paper shows the feasibility of the application of DLT to SR-related challenges in a practical experiment. For future work, it is proposed to focus on more complex tasks through federated learning or inter-swarm communications, possibly through Cosmos.
This paper presents a blockchain enabled secure data acquisition scheme utilizing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm where data are collected from the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and subsequently, forwarded to the nearest server through the UAV swarm. Before initiating data acquisition, the UAV swarm shares a shared key with the IoT devices in order to maintain communications. However, prior to transmitting data, the IoT devices encrypt the data and forward it to the UAV swarm. Upon receiving the data, the UAV swarm implements a two-phase validation utilizing the Ï-hash bloom filter and the digital signature algorithm to validate the sender; in addition, prior to forwarding data to the nearest server, it performs encryption. However, before adding data in blockchain, consent from all validators is required. Finally, the data are stored in blockchain with the approval of validators. A security analysis is performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is manifested through the implementation and simulation. The security analysis and the performance results show that UAV assist the IoT devices both in terms of connectivity and energy consumption, and provides security against the threats mentioned in the paper.