A novel approach for securing data against intrusion attacks in unmanned aerial vehicles integrated heterogeneous network using functional encryption technique

Abstract

AbstractAs the number of user equipment (UE) in any heterogeneous network (HetNet) assisted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) continues to grow, so does the number of intruder nodes. The intruder/malicious nodes are able to interfere with the ongoing data transmission in the network and carry out different kinds of active and passive attacks such as spoofing, masquerading, impersonating, and so on in the network thus requiring an optimized security technique for the network. This article implements the novel functional encryption (FE) technique in the proposed UAV assisted HetNet model for the dense urban area to secure data against such intrusions. In this network model, UAV acts as a relay node for those UE which are in nonline‐of‐sight communication with macro based station (MBS). For securing the data transmission among UAV, UE, and MBS, FE technique is implemented in the network in two phases: the first phase between UE and MBS and the second phase between MBS and UE through UAV. During implementation, the Dolev‐Yao attack model is considered in which intruders are able to intercept or modify the UE data. The main objective of the FE technique implementation is to provide security from such intrusion attacks. The proposed methodology is validated using automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool. The results of the AVISPA tool clearly indicate that the proposed technique is safe to implement in the UAV assisted HetNet, even in the presence of intruder nodes.