Drones as Cyber Weapons: A Reality, Not a Hyperbole

On the aftermath of the Mati wildfires in Greece that killed 100 people, the Greek Fire Department spokesperson made an announcement on June 2018, stating “Any manned and unmanned aircraft systems flights in an area of operations is a serious infringement and creates safety risks for flights. Any breach entails criminal and administrative liability. Excludes flights made with the permission of the Civil Aviation Authority and the approval of the Fire Department.” Two months later, on September 2018, the US Federal Aviation Authority issued a similar warning that “drone owners and operators may face significant fines if they interfere with emergency response operations in the areas affected by Hurricane Florence.”

The statements above highlight the efforts that entities around the world are taking to address the dangers posed by unmanned aerial vehicles to airspace safety. According to DHS and NASA, the number of commercial drones in the U.S. airspace is estimated to grow to more than seven million in the near future. When so many drones fly in the air, the potential to create serious safety and security issues is high.

To confront this risk, NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and industry have partnered to develop a capability to manage national airspace drone traffic called the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) infrastructure. A cloud-based software architecture, the mission of UTM is to organize the flight of drones registered with the FAA. You can think of it as an air traffic management system, but automated and in the cloud. Anyone flying a commercial drone will need to submit flight intent to other users and receive authorizations for specific access.

Drone Security Challenges

In accordance with DHS, commercial drone flights “produce challenges for law enforcement as they try to identify and interdict illicit activity. (Read more...)