HoneyDrone: A medium-interaction unmanned aerial vehicle honeypot

Over the last years, we have experienced an increased utilization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) not only in personal, but also commercial and public safety applications. Simultaneously, malicious activities have emerged too; from hijacking of UAVs (and their cargo), to the theft of private information stored in UAVs, attacks not only exist but seem to increase both in their numbers and their sophistication. In this paper, we propose HoneyDrone, the first honeypot that is specifically designed for the protection of UAVs. HoneyDrone emulates a number of UAV-specific and UAV-tailored protocols, making it possible to lure adversaries into attacking it. The honeypot is designed to run in portable low-cost devices, e.g., Raspberry Pis, which makes it possible to strategically deploy it in a variety of locations. Our system can assist in detecting active attackers in a certain area, as well as in shedding light into the adversaries' techniques for compromising UAVs. We evaluate HoneyDrone's performance and also examine a number of different realistic attack scenarios to show how the honeypot can cope with them.