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Security and Privacy Issues of UAV: A Survey

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Abstract

The rapid development of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV) brings much convenience to our life. However, security and privacy problems caused by UAVs are gradually exposed. This paper analyzes UAV safety from three aspects, including sensors, communications and multi-UAVs. A UAV relies on different sensors to locate and calculate its flight attitude, which means spoof and attacks on sensors are fatal. On the one hand, wrong information from sensors will lead UAVs to make wrong judgments. On the other hand, damage to sensors can cause UAVs to fail to obtain information and severely cause UAVs to crash. Information exchange between UAV and Ground Control Station(GCS) relies on communication links and an unsafe link is susceptible to attacks. Multi-UAVs applications rely on stable network among UAVs. Ad-hoc network the mainstream of current networking method but it still exists many potential dangers. Besides, another possibility of privacy disclosure caused by aerial photos is also mentioned. These photos often contain private information such as location and shooting time which is likely to be leaked when the photographer shares photos on social applications. Finally, we summarize the paper and discuss the future research direction.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China under grant 2018YFB1003205; by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant U1836208, U1536206, U1836110, 61602253, 61672294; by the Jiangsu Basic Research Programs-Natural Science Foundation under grant numbers BK20181407; by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD) fund; by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology (CICAEET) fund, China.

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  1. School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, No 219, Ning Liu Road, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Yueyan Zhi, Zhangjie Fu, Xingming Sun & Jingnan Yu

  2. College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Zhangjie Fu

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  1. Yueyan Zhi
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Correspondence to Zhangjie Fu.

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Zhi, Y., Fu, Z., Sun, X. et al. Security and Privacy Issues of UAV: A Survey. Mobile Netw Appl 25, 95–101 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-018-1193-x

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