Many years ago, I wrote about the EXIF data in pictures taken with Smartphones. Smartphones often record extensive meta data including GPS and accelerometer data.

So I wondered how much similar data can be found in footage collected with a drone. As an example, I am using a DJI Mini Pro 4 drone. This is a very common and popular drone, and I just happened to have footage available.

The drone has the ability to record video as well as still photos. For the still photos, typically saves in JPG format, the data looks a bit like what you expect from a smartphone. It includes camera parameters, date, time, and GPS coordinates (oddly, the height was VERY wrong in my sample if I used the "exists" tools, but inspecting it with a homemade tool, it looks better. Likely just an encoding issue)

Here is the complete EXIF data from a sample image

The coordinates are the coordinates of the drone, not the coordinates of the operator. The serial number of the drone is not displayed. Note that the serial number uses an "Unknown" exif tag and is only displayed with the -u option in exiftags

"Unkown Tags"

Some of the "Unknown" data may be sensitive, but I have not redacted it so far. Let me know if I should :)

The video data is a bit more complex. DJI saves 3 different files:

• MP4 File: This is the main, full resolution video file
• LRF File: Lower resolution video file
• SRT File: A file with GPS coordinates in "Subtitle" format (more below)

Users sharing a file are most likely going to share the MP4 file. Like the JPEG, some metadata is embedded in the MP4 data stream. It is less verbose than the JPEG data, but it does include the drone's serial number. I did not find GPS data in the MP4 metadata. Just information about the camera and firmware.

The SRT file contains some basic GPS data for each "time slice". In this format, it can easily be overlayed to the video file.

00:00:00,033 --> 00:00:00,066
<font size="28">FrameCnt: 2, DiffTime: 33ms
2024-03-20 12:59:17.852
[iso: 400] [shutter: 1/320.0] [fnum: 1.7] [ev: 2.0] [color_md: default] [focal_len: 36.30] [latitude: 30.xxxxxx] [longitude: -81.xxxxxx] [rel_alt: 6.500 abs_\
alt: -32.309] [ct: 5695] </font>

Again, only the drone's GPS data is saved, not the operator's location. It has been well documented that DJI includes the operator (or better controller) location in the datastream sent to the drone, in part to comply with regulations in some locales [1]. An image file doesn't necessarily give it away.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/dji-droneid-operator-location-hacker-tool/

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Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D. , Dean of Research, SANS.edu
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