Privacy-Aware Remote Identification for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Current Solutions, Potential Threats, and Future Directions

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial informatics Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 1069 - 1080
• Main Authors: Tedeschi, Pietro, Al Nuaimi, Fatima Ali, Awad, Ali Ismail, Natalizio, Enrico
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-02-2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Accountability; Anonymity; Autonomous aerial vehicles; Drones; Jamming; Operators; Privacy; Regulation; remote ID; Security; Unmanned aerial vehicles; unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); Wireless fidelity
• ISSN: 1551-3203; 1941-0050
• DOI: 10.1109/TII.2023.3280325

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently introduced a new standard, namely, remote identification , to improve accountability for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operations. This rule requires UAV operators to broadcast messages revealing sensitive data, such as identity and location on the wireless channel. However, this leads to security and privacy concerns among UAV operators. Unauthorized parties may easily discover the location and identity of a UAV flying in a specific area and launch attacks on it such as using wireless jamming or tracking its activity. This review investigates and systematizes the main weaknesses affecting the Remote ID capability required of modern UAVs, and the approaches through which attackers can exploit these weaknesses to disrupt safety and accountability. Moreover, this article analyzes current solutions that mitigate privacy issues associated with Remote ID . Finally, we identify multiple challenges that require to be addressed by both industry and academia, and we propose future research directions to improve the security and privacy of UAVs.