Cybersecurity Risk Assessment for Medium-Risk Drones: A Systematic Literature Review

The increased demand for remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) beyond visual line-of-sight operations gives rise to a set of concerns regarding cybersecurity that, if not addressed, can lead to the unsafe operation of RPASs. To assist the airworthiness evaluation that is performed by civil aviation authorities, we identified several processes that are used to evaluate the cybersecurity of RPAS. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) by selecting 30 papers (out of 211 screened) that were published during the past five years. The results of our SLR indicate the importance of cybersecurity to the safe operation of RPAS. It is evident that there is a lack of a systematic process to enable a cybersecurity review of RPAS. We observe that common cyber threats to RPAS are related to jamming, spoofing, and denial of service/distributed denial of service. Processes relevant to the assessment of RPAS cybersecurity exist, however, they differ in safety concerns from our perspective. In addition, with only one exception, the methods have not been used, and/or the use has not been reported as pertaining to industrial application. The most frequently cited vulnerabilities are those related to GPS and datalinks.