How to improve routing protocol security in a RPAS swarm?

Jean-Aimé Maxa (1) , Mohamed-Slim Ben Mahmoud (2) , Nicolas Larrieu (1)

1 TELECOM-RESCO
2 TELECOM - ENAC - Equipe télécommunications

UAV Ad hoc Network (UAANET) is a wireless ad hoc network composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Ground Control Station (GCS). It requires an efficient and secure routing protocols to find accurate and secure route between nodes to exchange data traffics. There have been several secure routing proposals to ensure data authentication and integrity services of ad hoc routing protocols. However, most of them are vulnerable against wormhole attacks and therefore cannot be used for UAANET directly without amendment. The wormhole attack involves two attackers who perform a colluding attack. In this paper, we present a new UAANET secure routing protocol called SUAP (Secure Uav Ad hoc routing Protocol). It ensures message authentication and provides detection and prevention of wormhole attacks. SUAP is a reactive protocol using public key cryptography, hash chains and geographical leashes. We have carried out a formal verification analysis of SUAP security properties using the AVISPA tool, an automated model checker for the analysis of security features. We have also validated our security proposal through formal model checking using Simulink and Stateflow tool. Furthermore, UAANETs must be certified in the near future to act as autonomous systems without a dedicated safety pilot and to be authorized to fly in the national airspace. In such a context, in this paper, we contribute to the certification of the secure UAANET communication system software using a Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach and real experiments based validation. The validation process followed uses sequentially formal verification methods and real-world experimental results. The objective is to evaluate the routing protocol efficiency to a set of unexpected hazardous issues that come with the real environment. Additionally, we use a hybrid experimental system (based on virtual machines and a virtual mesh framework) under a realistic UAANET scenario to evaluate SUAP routing performances and validate its security properties.

Mots clés: UAV ad hoc network; routing protocol; security architecture; drone communications; RPAS swarm; model checking; wormhole attack; hybrid simulation

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Jean-Aimé Maxa, Mohamed-Slim Ben Mahmoud, Nicolas Larrieu. How to improve routing protocol security in a RPAS swarm?. 4th AETOS International Workshop on "Research Challenges for Future RPAS/UAV Systems", Oct 2016, Mérignac, France. ⟨hal-01362115⟩