Drones are being used by law enforcement and border control surveillance teams. In fact, the use of drones is not limited to commercial and personal aims. Moreover, the technological advancement enables easy manipulations via smart-phones to fly mini-drones instead of using remote controllers. This is mainly due to their advantages over commercial helicopters when it comes to costs and budget. As a result, more than 10,000 drones will be operational for commercial use within the next five years. This is due to the drones’ ability to offer a live-stream, real-time video and image capture, along with the ability to fly and transport goods. The reliance and use of drones is constantly rising in numerous domains.

As a result, various civilian and military anti-drones/UAVs (detective and preventive) countermeasures will be reviewed. Moreover, it allows them to adopt and come up with new techniques and technologies for enhanced UAV attack detection and protection. This review would greatly help ethical hackers to understand the existing vulnerabilities of UAVs in both military and civilian domains. A realistic attack scenario is also presented, which details how the authors performed a simulated attack on a given drone following the hacking cycle.

Moreover, this paper presents a detailed review on the drone/Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) usage in multiple domains (i.e civilian, military, terrorism, etc.) and for different purposes. As such, this paper analyzes the exploitation of drones vulnerabilities within communication links, as well as smart devices and hardware, including smart-phones and tablets. The different uses of drones for malicious purposes are also reviewed, along the possible detection methods. The aim of this survey is to investigate the emerging threats of using drones in cyber-attacks, along the countermeasures to thwart these attacks. Therefore, the need for detective, protective and preventive counter-measures is highly required. The probability and frequency of these attacks are both high and their impact can be very dangerous with devastating effects. However, recently, the malicious use of drones began to emerge among criminals and cyber-criminals alike. Drones are providing users with a bird’s eye that can be activated and used almost anywhere and at any time. The pervasive aspect of these drones is due to their ability to answer people’s needs. Recently, the world witnessed a significant increase in the number of used drones, with a global and continuous rise in the demand for their multi-purpose applications.

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