Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled intelligent systems are emerging and empowering real-time monitoring and modeling tasks. The security requirements in real-time UAV-enabled intelligent systems are data integrity, authenticity, traceability, tamper-proofing, and privacy. A secure channel established by authenticated key agreement (AKA) protocol can cover all the security requirements. However, no UDP-based lightweight pairing-free AKA protocol has been proposed for the UAV system. In this article, we propose a UDP-compatible Curve25519-infrastructural identity-based end-to-end pre-AKA protocol (UDP-IBE2E-pAKA) with system auto-upgrading and direct and lifecycle credential revocation as a lightweight and reliable UDP-based secure communication module for UAV-enabled networks, which perfectly fits the rapid mobility and extremely harsh work environments of UAVs. To protect UAV-enabled systems stable from DDoS attacks, we construct an efficient identity-based signature as a preauthentication mechanism for the verifier to directly authenticate the sender without any redundant operations. In addition, to prevent the corrupted UAV from monitoring and disrupting attacks, our protocol can revoke the malicious entities directly and immediately with a revocation list in the authentication phase. Moreover, online mode auto-upgradable algorithms are designed to achieve key exposure resistance in our protocol. The full proof of the authenticity and privacy are given in this article. The comprehensive comparison with other state-of-the-art end-to-end AKA protocols indicates that our protocol meets the most robustness and highest efficiency on Raspberry Pi 5.
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled intelligent systems are emerging and empowering real-time monitoring and modeling tasks. The security requirements in real-time UAV-enabled intelligent systems are data integrity, authenticity, traceability, tamper-proofing, and privacy. A secure channel established by authenticated key agreement (AKA) protocol can cover all the security requirements. However, no UDP-based lightweight pairing-free AKA protocol has been proposed for the UAV system. In this article, we propose a UDP-compatible Curve25519-infrastructural identity-based end-to-end pre-AKA protocol (UDP-IBE2E-pAKA) with system auto-upgrading and direct and lifecycle credential revocation as a lightweight and reliable UDP-based secure communication module for UAV-enabled networks, which perfectly fits the rapid mobility and extremely harsh work environments of UAVs. To protect UAV-enabled systems stable from DDoS attacks, we construct an efficient identity-based signature as a preauthentication mechanism for the verifier to directly authenticate the sender without any redundant operations. In addition, to prevent the corrupted UAV from monitoring and disrupting attacks, our protocol can revoke the malicious entities directly and immediately with a revocation list in the authentication phase. Moreover, online mode auto-upgradable algorithms are designed to achieve key exposure resistance in our protocol. The full proof of the authenticity and privacy are given in this article. The comprehensive comparison with other state-of-the-art end-to-end AKA protocols indicates that our protocol meets the most robustness and highest efficiency on Raspberry Pi 5.
The technology of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has evolved and contributed to improving road safety and traffic efficiency in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). ITS applications are dependent on a communication network formed between AVs and UAVs suffer from security and privacy issues owing to vulnerable wireless communication channels. Considering these issues, SP2AP, a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based efficient and reliable privacy-preserving authentication protocol for secure UAV-UAV communications in IoT systems is presented in this paper. The proposed protocol not only offers anonymity and untraceability features but also mitigates UAV capture attacks. A robust informal security analysis confirms that the SP2AP protocol safeguards against various known security attacks, such as masquerade, Man-In- The-Middle (MITM), Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL), replay, node tampering, cloning, etc. The proposed protocol offers other security features, including mutual authentication, secure key agreement, no clock synchronization, user anonymity, untraceability, (for/back)ward secrecy, property, and drone-to-drone direct authentication. The formal security proof is performed using the Real-OR-Random (ROR) model, and the Scyther tool also demonstrates that the SP2AP protocol is more robust in terms of security and privacy. Performance analysis evaluates computation and communication costs, which show better superiority compared to similar existing protocols.
Abstract With the advancement of information technology and the reduction of costs, the application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has gradually expanded from the military field to the industrial field and civilian field. It brings great convenience to people in surveillance, detection, transportation, emergency rescue etc. However, UAVs usually work in harsh natural environments, and their communication security confronts various challenges. Due to UAVs' limited resources, such as computing capability, storage space, and energy, traditional security protection schemes based on complex cryptographic algorithms are not suitable for UAV systems directly. Therefore, a two‐stage lightweight identity authentication and key agreement protocol for UAV is proposed in this paper. The entire process only uses hash and XOR operations, which significantly improves the authentication efficiency. Simultaneously, the physical unclonable function (PUF) is introduced and embedded into the UAV hardware to ensure UAV network communication security when a UAV suffers a physical capture attack. In the paper, the security of the proposed protocol is proved with Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real‐or‐Random (ROR) model, and AVISPA simulation tools. An informal security analysis is also provided to illustrate that the protocol satisfies the security requirements of UAV networks. Finally, the protocol is compared with other existing protocols regarding function properties, computation cost, and communication cost, which shows that the proposed protocol has effectiveness and practicality.
Secure communication in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks is critical for a wide range of civil and military applications, from precision agriculture and disaster response to critical infrastructure monitoring. These missions require lightweight, tamper-resistant, and quantum-secure authentication mechanisms. We examine the recently proposed Quantum-Resistant Identity Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for UAV Networks Based on the Kyber Algorithm (LIGKYX) and demonstrate its critical weaknesses, including a lack of Perfect Forward/Backward Secrecy (PFS/PBS), and desynchronization vulnerabilities. To address these limitations, we propose a novel authentication and key agreement protocol that integrates SRAM-based Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with the Kyber post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism, eliminating the reliance on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and stateful counters used in LIGKYX. The security of the proposed protocol is validated through both formal and informal analyses, demonstrating strong resistance to replay, impersonation, man-in-the-middle, desynchronization, and UAV capture attacks. Performance evaluation confirms its efficiency: the total communication overhead is reduced by 7.1% (from 1836 bytes in LIGKYX to 1705 bytes in the proposed scheme), and the total authentication time is reduced by more than 54%, from 87.84 ms in LIGKYX to 40.23 ms in the proposed scheme. These improvements demonstrate that the protocol not only strengthens security but also significantly reduces computation and communication costs. Overall, the proposed solution offers a lightweight, scalable, and quantum-resistant authentication framework tailored for resource-constrained UAV environments, representing a substantial advancement over existing schemes such as LIGKYX.
As the core subject of IoT applications, IoT devices have faced numerous security challenges. Especially for IoT devices deployed in remote or harsh environments, they are often unattended for long periods, making it difficult to share the sensing data and susceptible to potential physical attacks. While aerial assistance methods represented by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can solve the problem of data sharing at a low cost, it is necessary to establish a secure channel between ground control stations, UAVs, and IoT devices due to the sensitivity of the sensing data. Recently, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) has been proven to provide unique identity identification for devices using its tamper-proof feature. In this paper, we propose a lightweight UAV-assisted authentication and key agreement protocol for unattended IoT devices, ensuring secure communication and physical tamper-proof requirements. However, our work does not stop there. We noticed that some existing PUF-based authentication schemes misunderstand the ability of PUF, which leads to these schemes cannot actually provide physical protection. We analyzed the security vulnerabilities of these schemes and proposed rules that should be followed when designing authentication protocols using PUF. In addition, for the first time, we put forward the formal definitions and proof methods for PUF in the formal proof of the security protocol, which avoided the unreasonable initial assumptions adopted in the proof of the existing schemes. We extended Mao-Boyd (MB) logic and comprehensively analyzed the proposed protocol. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, and the results show that the proposed scheme has certain advantages in communication and computation overhead compared with existing schemes.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network serves as the core infrastructure of the future low-altitude intelligent network, providing flexible aerial smart services for various industries through inter-UAV collaboration and ground-air connectivity. With the advancement of quantum computing, quantum algorithms pose a serious threat to UAV communication networks. Traditional authentication protocols based on classical number-theoretic problems are no longer secure against quantum attacks. To address the challenges of quantum threats and the inherent characteristics of UAVs, such as high mobility and resource constraints, this paper proposes a quantum resistant authentication and key agreement protocol for UAV networks. The comprehensive informal security analysis demonstrates the robustness of the protocol against various attacks, particularly attacks based on quantum computing. Furthermore, the authentication component of the protocol adopts a lightweight design, reducing computational overhead by up to 53.57%, thereby balancing security and efficiency.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become the preferred tool for terrain exploration due to their aerial perspective and maneuverability. Communication security between parties is ensured through the Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol. Traditional terrain exploration data processing relies on large-scale data centers, which suffer from inconvenient setup and insufficient real-time capabilities. Existing AKA protocols are susceptible to physical attacks and machine learning attacks, and they also suffer from high overhead and single-point-of-failure issues. To address these challenges, we propose a three factors authentication and key agreement protocol for UAVs-assisted terrain exploration. Specifically, we design an elliptic curve cryptography-based AKA framework to avoid single-point-of-failure issues at ground control stations, ensuring the security of the entire AKA process. Using portable terminals as fog nodes to serve as data transit stations, addressing the issues of inconvenient data center setup and insufficient real-time performance. During the login phase, three-factor authentication combining passwords, biometric features, and smart cards ensures the legitimacy of user identities. The physical properties of physically unclonable function (PUF) are utilized to resist physical attacks. Use reconfigurable PUF to update responses and resist machine learning attacks. We use the ROR model, informal security analysis, and ProVerif tool to rigorously verify our scheme. The results indicate the protocol can resist various attacks. Finally, compared to existing protocols, U2D and U2U achieve computational efficiency improvements of 56.9% and 33.4%, respectively, while reducing communication overhead by 38.1% and 28.0%, and lowering energy consumption by 24.5% and 39.2%, simultaneously, they against physical attacks and machine learning attacks, significantly enhancing security.