Autonomous Flying Ad-Hoc Networks

4Quantum Cryptography for Secure FANET

Taskeen Zaidi¹ and Neha S.²*

¹ Department of CS&IT, Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Bangalore, Karnataka, India

² Master of Computer Application, Jain (Deemed-to-be University), Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Abstract

The security of a flying ad hoc network (FANET) is crucial because of its unique characteristics, such as its dynamic topology, high mobility, and decentralized network. The existing routing used by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) comes with certain routing attacks, such as sinkhole attacks, dropping attacks, blackhole attacks, identity spoofing, data tampering, data leakage, and radio spoofing. The encrypting method used in UAV networks at present is based on mathematical complexity, which works quite well but can be easily decoded by quantum computers in no time. Quantum cryptography addresses the limitations of classical cryptographic methods. The protocol designed with a quantum mechanism based on the laws of physics will be a solution to many security threats for UAVs. The implementation of quantum cryptography requires specialized hardware that provides secure communication links, data protection, and detection of eavesdropping attempts. Post-quantum cryptography, the no-cloning theorem, and quantum key distribution (QKD) establish a shared secret key for both UAVs, which makes it impossible to be decoded by man-in-the-middle attacks.

Keywords: Security, cryptography, quantum computing, protocol

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