Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), an emerging architecture that embodies flying ad-hoc networks, face critical privacy and security challenges, mainly when engaged in data-sensitive missions. Therefore, message authentication is a crucial security feature in drone communications. This paper presents a Blockchain-based Efficient, and Trusted Authentication scheme for UAV communication, BETA-UAV, which exploits the inherent properties of blockchain technology concerning memorability and is immutable to record communication sessions via transactions using a smart contract. The smart contract in BETA-UAV allows participants to publish and call transactions from the blockchain network. Furthermore, transaction addresses are proof of freshness and trustworthiness for subsequent transmissions. Furthermore, we investigated their ability to resist active attacks, such as impersonation, replaying, and modification. In addition, we evaluate the gas costs associated with the functions of the smart contract by implementing a BETA-UAV on the Ethereum public blockchain. A comparison of the computation and communication overheads shows that the proposed approach can save significant costs over traditional techniques.

翻译：无人机作为一种体现飞行自组网的新兴架构，在从事数据敏感任务时面临严重的隐私和安全挑战。因此，消息认证是无人机通信中的关键安全特性。本文提出了一种基于区块链的高效可信无人机通信认证方案BETA-UAV，该方案利用区块链技术固有的可记忆性与不可篡改性，通过智能合约将通信会话记录为交易进行存储。BETA-UAV中的智能合约允许参与者从区块链网络中发布和调用交易。此外，交易地址可作为后续传输的新鲜性证明与可信性证明。我们还研究了该方案抵抗主动攻击（如冒充、重放和篡改）的能力。同时，通过在以太坊公有链上部署BETA-UAV，我们评估了智能合约各功能相关的燃料消耗成本。计算开销与通信开销的对比表明，该方案相比传统技术能够显著节省成本。