Securing UAV Communication: Authentication and Integrity

Recent technological advancements have seen the integration of unmanned aerial networks (UAVs) into various sectors, from civilian missions to military operations. In this context, ensuring security, precisely authentication, is essential to prevent data theft and manipulation. A Man-in-the-Middle attack not only compromises network integrity but also threatens the original data, potentially leading to theft or alteration. In this work, we proposed an authentication method to secure UAV data exchange over an insecure communication channel. Our solution combines Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange and Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) within ROS communication channels to authenticate exchanged UAV data. We evaluated our method by measuring transmission time and simulating key tampering, finding acceptable performance for DH key sizes below 4096 bits but longer times for larger sizes due to increased complexity. Both drones successfully detected tampered keys, affirming our method's efficacy in protecting UAV communication. However, scalability challenges in resource-constrained environments warrant further research.