Analyzing the Viability of UAV Missions Facing Cyber Attacks

With advanced video and sensing capabilities, unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used for numerous applications that involve the collaboration and autonomous operation of teams of UAVs. Yet such vehicles can be affected by cyber attacks, impacting the viability of their missions. We propose a method to conduct mission viability analysis under cyber attacks for missions that employ a team of several UAVs that share a communication network. We apply our method to a case study of a survey mission in a wildfire firefighting scenario. Within this context, we show how our method can help quantify the expected mission performance impact from an attack and determine if the mission can remain viable under various attack situations. Our method can be used both in the planning of the mission and for decision making during mission operation. Our approach to modeling attack progression and impact analysis with Petri nets is also more broadly applicable to other settings involving multiple resources that can be used interchangeably towards the same objective.