Journal of Information Security and Applications 55 (2020) 102670 Available online 26 October 2020 2214-2126/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Security and privacy of UAV data using blockchain technology Rupa Ch a , Gautam Srivastava *, b, c , Thippa Reddy Gadekallu d , Praveen Kumar Reddy Maddikunta d , Sweta Bhattacharya d a Department of Computer Science, VR Siddhartha Engineering College, Vijayawada 520007, India b Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Brandon University, 270 18th Street, Brandon R7A 6A9, Canada c Research Center for Interneural Computing, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan, Republic of China d School of Information Technology and Engineering, VIT - Vellore, Tamilnadu, India A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Internet of things UAV Drones Blockchain Security Privacy ABSTRACT The utility of virtual circuit (VC) based devices - UAVs, Drones, and similar other IoT based devices have gained immense momentum in the present day and age. These devices are predominantly used for aerial surveying in sensitive and remote areas. It is alarming that issues pertaining to stalking and information control have increased with the growth of technology. This paper presents a Blockchain Technology (BCT) based solution to improve the security and privacy of VC based device data. The proposed design is evaluated by implementing an IoT based application in a virtual vehicle monitoring system. The technical information about the instructions to the vehicle (devices), authentication, integrity, and vehicle reactions are stored in a cloud platform wherein Pentatope based Elliptic curve cryptography and SHA are used to ensure privacy in data storage. The data is later stored in an Ethereum based public blockchain to enable seamless BCT transactions. This system uses the Ganache platform for BCT that ensures data protection and privacy. Furthermore, metamask wallet for E t hbalance is required to perform transactions over BCT. The proposed methodology thus helps to protect data from stalkers, plaintext attacks as well as ciphertext attacks. The results, when compared with the state-of-the- art, justify the effciency and security aspects of the proposed approach. 1. Introduction: Drones integrated with IoT devices are known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that can usually fy autonomously. Due to the advancement in technology and urbanization, the popularity of these devices has increased radically since their introduction in the market circa 2010. First, they started as commercial drones [1]. The general use of these UAV became an alternative approach for companies that delivered items. It became an alternative transportation approach to deliver goods to customers due to faster delivery and minimized expenditure. As an example, Amazon has accepted and announced the benefts of integrating drones and related technologies into their exist- ing delivery system, which has enhanced its rate of delivery [2,3]. This has motivated Amazon to invest more in research and development of UAVs that create a positive impact in their supply chain management systems [4,5]. Different types of communication technologies are used in virtual circuit (VC) [6] based devices such as Bluetooth-based Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN), Zigbee based WPAN, Wireless LAN Area network (WLAN), Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE advanced based cellular, 5G, and 6G based Cellular networks [7–10]. These technologies play a signifcant role as supporting systems in the surveillance of multimedia streaming relevant to dynamic network segments of the drone, UAV, or similar IoT based devices architecture. But as any coin has two sides, there are instances of exploitation in such applications that act as a major concern and also a motivational factor in the present study. In the present day and age, the utility of VC based applications has increased immensely due to their inbuilt speed and altitude supporting systems, which have contributed signifcantly towards their utilization rate. If such technologies are appropriately deployed and operated, they may prove to be highly reliable and cost-effcient wireless communication-based solutions for diverse problems in the real world scenario [10,11]. As an example, the majority of governments use UAV * Corresponding author at: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Brandon University, 270 18th Street, Brandon R7A 6A9, Canada. E-mail addresses: srivastavag@brandonu.ca (G. Srivastava), thippareddy.g@vit.ac.in (T. Reddy Gadekallu), praveenkumarreddy@vit.ac.in (P.K.R. Maddikunta), sweta.b@vit.ac.in (S. Bhattacharya). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Information Security and Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jisa https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2020.102670