A Nigerian-born network security engineer, Peter Onukak, has developed a new algorithm designed to strengthen the security of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks, targeting one of the sector’s most difficult challenges—node capture attacks.

Onukak, who earned a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the State University of New York at Binghamton, said his work enhances the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) algorithm by introducing a reputation-based model. The system is designed to build trust between autonomous drones, evaluate their trustworthiness in real time, and help them function reliably even in hostile environments.

“Traditional security is like a wall with a gate. Once you’re inside, you are trusted. That doesn’t work for autonomous systems,” Onukak said. “We needed a system based on constant verification, a ‘trust-but-always-verify’ model.”

Explaining how the new approach works, he said the algorithm assigns trust scores to drones to reinforce dynamic access control. “This allows them to recognise compromised nodes, isolate them swiftly, and adapt dynamically as threats evolve. The improvement increases nodes’ fault tolerance from 33.3 per cent to 50 per cent,” he noted.

He added that by combining consensus mechanisms with reputation scoring, the system achieves greater resilience and protection against evolving threats.

The work has attracted the interest of the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), which is examining its potential application in securing next-generation autonomous defence systems. According to Onukak, the research offers a pathway for military UAV swarms to operate securely during intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

His contributions also extend to wireless communication and artificial intelligence-driven authentication. He said these areas of research demonstrate how innovative work from Nigerians is shaping cybersecurity solutions globally.