Frequency-based detection of replay attacks: application to a quadrotor UAV

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are reported to be highly exposed as possible targets of cyber attacks, due to their strong strategic and economic value, and their increasing use in a wide range of operations. Among the most critical cyber attacks, replay attacks are performed by replacing the real data coming from the sensors with previously recorded data. In this way, the attacker may provoke performance degradation, cause instability, and allow to perform undetectable physical attacks. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate the applicability of a frequency-based detection method, which uses a sine wave with time-varying frequency as authentication signal, to a UAV affected by replay attacks. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated through simulation scenarios.