Development of a Drone-Mounted Wireless Attack Platform is an Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) thesis by Nathan V. Barker.

The commercial drone market has experienced rapid growth thanks to drones’ expanding utility and enhanced capabilities. This surge in popularity has led to the availability of affordable drones with impressive carrying capacities and extended flight times for consumers. However, these advancements have also opened up new opportunities for wireless hackers. Leveraging the mobility of drones, hackers can outfit them with hacking tools to easily bypass physical security measures, such as fences, and gain access to wireless networks.

This research project aims to empirically assess the effectiveness of a drone-mounted wireless attack platform equipped with a directional antenna in conducting wireless attacks over distances exceeding 800 meters. To test this hypothesis, a prototype known as “skypie v2” was employed to execute computer network attacks against a target network. The data captured during these experiments was then used to evaluate the platform’s performance. The results revealed that the capture of a WPA2 handshake was achievable at an RSSI of -72 dBm, equivalent to a distance of 2400 meters from a network situated in an open field. Furthermore, nmap scans were conducted successfully at an RSSI value of -74 dBm, covering nearly 3000 meters from the target network.

Development of a Drone-Mounted Wireless Attack Platform contains the following major sections:

  • Introduction
  • Background and Related Research
  • Prototype Design
  • Methodology
  • Results and Analysis
  • Conclusions and Future Work

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Author- Nathan V. Barker

See Also-

Cyber-Attack Drone Payload Development and Geolocation