Insights on Using Deep Learning to Spoof Inertial Measurement Units for Stealthy Attacks on UAVs

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) find increasing use in mission critical tasks both in civilian and military operations. Most UAVs rely on Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to calculate vehicle attitude and track vehicle position. Therefore, an incorrect IMU reading can cause a vehicle to destabilize, and possibly even crash. In this paper, we describe how a strategic adversary might be able to introduce spurious IMU values that can deviate a vehicle from its mission-specified path while at the same time evade customary anomaly detection mechanisms, thereby effectively perpetuating a “stealthy attack” on the system. We explore the feasibility of a Deep Neural Network (DNN) that uses a vehicle's state information to calculate the applicable IMU values to perpetrate such an attack. The eventual goal is to cause a vehicle to perturb enough from its mission parameters to compromise mission reliability, while, from the operator's perspective, the vehicle still appears to be operating normally.