Drones in Distress: A Game-Theoretic Countermeasure for Protecting UAVs Against GPS Spoofing

Abstract

One prominent security threat that targets unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is the capture via global positioning system (GPS) spoofing in which an attacker manipulates a UAV’s GPS signals in order to capture it. Given the anticipated widespread deployment of UAVs for various purposes, it is imperative to develop new security solutions against such attacks. In this article, a mathematical framework is introduced for analyzing and mitigating the effects of GPS spoofing attacks on UAVs. In particular, system dynamics are used to model the optimal routes that the UAVs will adopt to reach their destinations. The GPS spoofer’s effect on each UAV’s route is also captured by the model. To this end, the spoofer’s optimal imposed locations on the UAVs, are analytically derived; allowing the UAVs to predict their traveling routes under attack. Then, a countermeasure mechanism is developed to mitigate the effect of the GPS spoofing attack. The countermeasure is built on the premise of cooperative localization, in which a UAV can determine its location using nearby UAVs instead of the possibly compromised GPS locations. To better utilize the proposed defense mechanism, a dynamic Stackelberg game is formulated to model the interactions between a GPS spoofer and a drone operator. In particular, the drone operator acts as the leader that determines its optimal strategy in light of the spoofer’s expected response strategy. The equilibrium strategies of the game are then analytically characterized and studied through a novel proposed algorithm. The simulation results show that, when combined with the Stackelberg strategies, the proposed defense mechanism will outperform baseline strategy selection techniques in terms of reducing the possibility of UAV capture.