Threat Modeling and Security Requirements for Dynamic Reconfigurable UAV Flight Control Systems

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have evolved into autonomous cyber–physical systems operating in adversarial and safety-critical environments. While recent research has emphasised hardware-assisted security and reconfigurable System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures, a systematic problem formulation addressing security threats in dynamically reconfigurable UAV flight control systems remains largely unexplored. This paper presents a structured threat modelling framework tailored for UAV flight controllers implemented on reconfigurable SoC platforms. We identify adversarial capabilities, characterise attack surfaces across cyber, physical, and reconfiguration layers, and derive security requirements specific to dynamic partial reconfiguration. The proposed formulation establishes a foundational problem statement for adaptive, hardware-rooted security architectures in next-generation UAV systems