GPS Spoofing With $3000 Worth of Equipment and a Laptop 180
First time accepted submitter svartbjorn writes "Todd Humphreys and a team from the University of Texas proved the concept that a terrorist could take over the navigation of a ship or even a plane, making it appear to the crew that the ship was moving along a straight line course when in fact it was changing course under the control of the device. This raises some serious issues for this being used for terrorist purposes."
Now (Score:5, Funny)
the feds will require all laptops to be registered and have a remote kill switch installed. Can't let the terrorists win!!
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It's news worthy but isn't at the same time ... (Score:2, Interesting)
To say that I didn't know this was possible until now would be far from the truth.
As an avid Air Crash Investigation [natgeotv.com.au] fan, both my wife and myself watch this show on a regular basis. I surmised this was possible a number of years ago. I also thought the concept of spoofing transponders on Cars when we eventually started adapting this technology to Cars was also going to pose similar issues as well and funnily enough it was something that did make the news (don't remember the article now but it did make Slash
Re:It's news worthy but isn't at the same time ... (Score:5, Informative)
Ahh, but you can sign those packets the GPS satellites are sending. The US military uses encrypted GPS to prevent precisely this kind of attack. It also allows them to use their selective denial system to cut off part of the world without affecting their own systems. Ask the Russians about what their latest trip into Georgia taught them about their reliance on GPS.
So, yes the US can fix it, and should. Every country that is working on their own GPS alternative should as well.
Software defined radio is changing the world. It's bringing the price to capture signals down to a $20 USB TV tuner, and the price to send signals to a few thousand dollars. Not bad for something that used to require millions in fab costs to build transmitter ASICS.
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And yet it didn't seem to work very well with that drone the Iranians captured through GPS spoofing. The problem seems to be that if you jam the encrypted signal the receiver falls back to the unencrypted one. Presumably the drone had inertial guidance as well, but clearly the system needs a bit of work.
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And yet it didn't seem to work very well with that drone the Iranians captured through GPS spoofing. The problem seems to be that if you jam the encrypted signal the receiver falls back to the unencrypted one. Presumably the drone had inertial guidance as well, but clearly the system needs a bit of work.
if they could do that I doubt we would be seeing any gps drones flying around anywhere.. it just went down.
I guess a good start for civilian tech would be to try to do directional analysis on the signal - to be more certain that it is coming from the direction where the satellite should be. for big planes this might work.
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Making a GPS antenna that was only good for a half-hemisphere would be the cheaper option. Is there really a great need to obtain GPS signals from the ground? I don't see WAAS being at all critical for drones or regular airplanes. Flying inverted could be a problem, but when you are flying inverted, your location is generally of little concern.
I guess there might be possible problem of bounce then, but that would be a nice addition. though, usually I guess they're on the top of the plane anyways.
that you can generate a gps signal with 3k doesn't surprise me that much. that it would prove a practical way to move gps based equipment around would be a surprise, unless you count diy drones.
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Another silly one. If the done used the unencrypted C/A GPS signal, then that's a specification or implementation issue that applies to all civilian users. If the issue was indeed spoofing (unlikely), then the drone must have used the C/A signal, because that's the only one that's feasible to be spoofed. The P(Y) signal is encrypted and is processed by modern receivers with key management via public crypto. The P(Y) signal could be spoofed in theory, if you had a couple thousand dishes around the world to c
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Unless perhaps the Chinese have the private key.
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I doubt it. It's easier to attack the stream cipher than the private key. Armed with a receiver with a high-gain tracking antenna, you can pretty much recover the key stream since you know both the publicly documented P code, and what the low frequency bit stream the P code is applied to.
I doubt that C/A would ever need to be used as a fallback. If you can receive C/A, you are receiving P(Y). There'd be no advantage to falling back to C/A, since that expressly reduces the robustness of the location data and
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And yet it didn't seem to work very well with that drone the Iranians captured through GPS spoofing.
And yet there is still no evidence whatsoever that this is what happened to the drone. I trust the Iranian government about as much as I trust my own government, which is to say, not at all.
Re:It's news worthy but isn't at the same time ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? There are all sorts of things you can do to mitigate such attacks.
For one, you can sign GPS data without encrypting it. Old equipment can use the plain-text data without issue. New equipment can optionally verify the signature, if that makes sense in the particular application. If your systems does choose to verify the signature it can choose to ignore bad signatures, to warn the user, to throw out the lone bad signal, to throw out the whole fix calculation, etc. There's nothing technically complicated about that at all.
Another approach is to cross-verify this data. Planes and boats have inertial guidance (along with accelerometers, magnetometers, altimeters, etc.), which can easily be compared against each other to determine if one system is providing inaccurate data. And several of those systems require no external reference, making them quite difficult to hack. Combining all that data, throwing out the bits that don't match, and calculating a best-fit solution is pretty common even in low-end position/orientation systems, and I have to assume it's bog-standard in things like planes (or could be if it's not). Even cars have access to a lot of other data (wheel speed, engine speed, compass, etc.) that can be used for similar purposes.
And there are simple signal-based protections you can apply, that raise the complexity of an attack without requiring any modification to the broadcast signal. For example, you could use multiple antennas to ensure you're only listening for signals from the right slice of sky. You could track changes in signal level. You could track bitstream synchronization. None of that would prevent a local radio from overpowering the real system, but it would help you catch the switchover.
Not to mention you could provide some absolute reference via out-of-band tracking and comm. -- a system on the ground gets an actual fix based on radar/etc., and every minute or two sends out that fix with a timestamp via a non-GPS comm system. The on-board position tracker could then validate that external fix against its internal fix at the same time, and take appropriate action if there's a mismatch. This wouldn't stop short-term/small-delta attacks, as the data isn't instant and has some margin of error, but it would prevent long-term/large-delta attacks.
And you can do all of those at the same time -- together that's a lot of protection. I also suspect there are a lot of other things you could do to mitigate such attacks; this is just the list of things I could name of without any research or consideration.
It's also worth noting that removing autonomous course tracking (not even actual driving, but the whole navigation solution, as human pilots use the same navigational systems the computer does) does not solve this problem. It's not technically complicated to construct a sextant/stopwatch/etc. that gives false readings to misdirect whatever form of navigation the crew might undertake, even with no computers in sight.
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This is well known to be possible, has been done for years, and you can buy commercial test equipment that sends spoof GPS signals (for testing GPS receivers obviously). More importantly there's another simpler way that cannot be dealt with by signing - just relay GPS signals from elsewhere.
If you capture GPS data at a point in space and retransmit the whole lot with enough power that the receiver sees only your signals then the receiver sees all the same phase relationships that put it in the location wher
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I have to wonder if you couldn't do this with DGPS alone. You know how far the two receivers are from one another. If that value changes, warning! My antique Garmin GPS 12 units will do DGPS...
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I spend most of my life at sea these days. Unless it's really foggy, I can generally detect an anomalous course change by looking out the window. I'll bet airplane pilots in VFR conditions can do the same.
When I fly VFR, I don't need GPS, it just helps me avoid airspace that I should not be in. However, when it comes to IFR conditions, GPS is really helpful. Chasing the magenta line, as professional pilots call it (I'm just a low-life private pilot). When that Magenta line is off by 1 kilometer, that can become a serious issue. For example here in the Bay Area.
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Is there any backup for GPS or other information source in IFR conditions?
Yes, much actually. VOR/DME and ADF are radio based navigational aids. And then there is of course the simple compass.
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In all honesty, there is NO WAY to step around this problem unless you get rid of autonomous driving/piloting all together.
Why? Wouldn't GPS/INS data integration with rejecting spurious GPS inputs help here?
Re:It's news worthy but isn't at the same time ... (Score:5, Informative)
What you claim as facts is a bunch of made up rubbish, sorry. First of all, what do you mean by tokenisation of communication? If you mean that tokens = packets than that's insane, so let's hope you mean something lese. Why the heck do you even need to talk about tokenisation?
If you like a doofus imply that encryption makes things less reliable, then that's just borderline clinical insane. Protip for the clueless: it's precisely the encryption of GPS's P-code that makes it pretty much spoof-proof. These days there are P(Y)-code receivers that don't need the hand off word (HOW) from C/A code. To accomplish that feat, they use optical correlators that perform the Fourier transform needed for fast correlation of the very long P(Y) code with the incoming signal in order to detect where in the sequence the code is, without using HOW. There's no one spoofing that.
While spoofing is somewhat theoretically possible, it'd require a fairly gargantuan effort. You'd need a station with a bunch (dozen) of fairly large (IIRC ~10m diameter) dishes tracking the individual satellites. And you'd need stations all around the globe so that you would have continuous coverage of all the satellites - the number of stations would be in the dozens, too. You could then receive good signal from each satellite individually, signal good enough to just read the P(Y) code without doing the correlations. As I've said, that's pretty crazy, and no single nation could pull it off since you really need to install equipment all over the world, and it's not stuff that fits in a suitcase. Oh, and of course you'd need to collect all those signals, put them through signal processing to recode them with fake data, and then transmit that in real time to the location where you intend to spoof stuff. I'm pretty damn sure the military receivers don't like date rollbacks, so it's not like you could record stuff last year and transmit this year.
Alas, GPS signal's encryption utilizes a stream cipher and not public key cryptography. But they do use public key crypto for key management. If it's ever found out how to break the cipher to extract the key, they may simply re-key the receivers more often - presumably the key extraction won't be an overnight thing. Now of course PKC is not the hardest thing to implement, far from it [dmitry.gr], as it can be done even on tiny 8 bit microcontrollers. But even RSA is still state of the art public key crypto, so you can get pretty good results without making it complicated. No need for complications, really.
So, you're just full of it. Where on Earth did you learn all this crap, or are you on some purposeful disinformation campaign?
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This does not spoof the military encrypted GPS band that airline GPS receivers use. Pilots seem to like flying into the ground more than machines. Current aircraft, mechanical or computational failure sti
Re:Now (Score:4, Funny)
Even better, we can add handprint recognition to knives so they only work for the registered owner.
OMG TERRORIST (Score:5, Insightful)
terrorists could do this, terrorists could do that, they can KILL YOU in so many ways! Run for your lives! Or better yet, submit to your federal overlords via TSA DHS who will keep you safe!
Actually no, fuck the terrorists, they're third world noobs living in mud huts and the best they could do in 12 years of trying realyl hard is to hijack a few planes with knives. You have more to fear from your own government than any terrorist.
Over and out
but there's this new thing called a knife! (Score:3)
Hint - 9/11
Meanwhile, the government IS, admittedly, tracking of your phone calls and emails. Have you called your Congressman yet? Posted on their Facebook page?
Re:but there's this new thing called a knife! (Score:5, Insightful)
And you know what? That entire problem was solved by putting locks on the door. For the 110% solution, the Feds no longer tell people to comply with hijacker's demands.
Everything else, the gutting of the Constitution -- that's just gravy for our rulers.
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And you know what? That entire problem was solved by putting locks on the door. For the 110% solution, the Feds no longer tell people to comply with hijacker's demands.
Except now the feds are back on the Be Sheep and Run Away kick.
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That entire problem was solved by putting locks on the door.
If by solved you mean that the flight crew can safely be relied upon to ignore torture and death on the other side of the wall.
No matter how young the victims or whether they are strangers or friends.
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And you know what? That entire problem was solved by putting locks on the door.
Locked doors mean nothing. It's like asking nicely "Please don't come in here, okay?"
Forget the lock. Kick the door in. The precious deadbolt can stay locked to the frame for eternity and not make any difference.
Forget the door; make a hole in the flimsy drywall. Go in via the floor or ceiling.
Any place that exists can be entered. It's merely quicker if you don't care about the damage wake you leave behind.
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Actually no, fuck the terrorists, they're third world noobs living in mud huts and the best they could do in 12 years of trying realyl hard is to hijack a few planes with knives.
In a lot of ways that's a "better" feat than crashing a plane with a rogue GPS signal. There's next to nothing feasible the government could do to the people to stop this happening.
OTOH, by taking down a few planes with knives the terrorists have manage to make the American government really work hard against the people, instead of for the people. Some might argue that it was already, but it's definitely worse now. The average American is now worse off because of 9/11, mainly because of the governments reac
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I don't know really anything about GPS. I've heard the military has one or two better systems which are barred from civilian use, but aren't that hard to use. Maybe we could use "OMG TERRORISM!" as an excuse to demand it for everyone. Alternatively, if military grade GPS is vulnerable to the same attack here, then it seems like that could ha
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It's pretty tricky, really. You have to simulate at least 4 satellites' signals, compensating for their orbital movement at the position where you want to tell your target it's located.
But its just numbers and time. That's all the GPS receiver knows about. It knows nothing actual orbits or movements. Just precise time and epheremis numbers. [wikipedia.org]
The signals would be trivial to generate with a computer.
GPS jammers are even easier. I was approaching a tractor trailer in Utah one moment, and the next the GPS was in a "Recalculating" frenzy and I was jumping from Montana to Iowa and points in between. After I was half a mile away from the rig everything was back to normal. Apparently some lon [arstechnica.com]
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I was approaching a tractor trailer in Utah one moment, and the next the GPS was in a "Recalculating" frenzy and I was jumping from Montana to Iowa and points in between.
Sounds like your GPS needs better position filtering.
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It's pretty tricky, really. You have to simulate at least 4 satellites' signals, compensating for their orbital movement at the position where you want to tell your target it's located.
But its just numbers and time. That's all the GPS receiver knows about. It knows nothing actual orbits or movements. Just precise time and epheremis numbers. [wikipedia.org] The signals would be trivial to generate with a computer.
Let's see your sample code to show it's trivial and your analysis that shows a normal clock can generate 4 or more signals and add them in real time accurately enough to spoof a standard GPS, let alone do what the article talks about and generate a stable enough signal that it can mislead a ship without the crew having a clue that anything is weird.
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It's pretty tricky, really. You have to simulate at least 4 satellites' signals, compensating for their orbital movement at the position where you want to tell your target it's located.
But its just numbers and time. That's all the GPS receiver knows about. It knows nothing actual orbits or movements. Just precise time and epheremis numbers. [wikipedia.org] The signals would be trivial to generate with a computer.
Let's see your sample code to show it's trivial and your analysis that shows a normal clock can generate 4 or more signals and add them in real time accurately enough to spoof a standard GPS, let alone do what the article talks about and generate a stable enough signal that it can mislead a ship without the crew having a clue that anything is weird.
It seems fairly easy to me. You don't need to "generate 4 or more signals and add them in real time". The "adding them in real time" is trivial, and is handled by the receiver. GPS math [wikipedia.org] is just math. If you were writing it out by hand it would not be fun, but it is trivial for a computer. The equations are solvable with no ambiguity unlike fluid mechanics equations.
What you need to do determine is:
1. "Where do I want the receiver to think it is?" The input. If I wanted the receiver to think it is
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You're unclear about whether talking about the 9/11 hijackers or the GPS spoofers. I first thought that you were talking about 9/11 where the evidence is pretty clear that someone flew some planes into some buildings. I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on the GPS spoofing though it seems possible.
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"You're unclear about whether talking about the 9/11 hijackers or the GPS spoofers. I first thought that you were talking about 9/11 where the evidence is pretty clear that someone flew some planes into some buildings."
Considering that I quoted the part I was replying to, it hardly seems unclear to me.
But the second thing is: yes, definitely, somebody flew some airplanes into some buildings. Just about anybody would have to be a fool to claim otherwise. But what does that have to do with my comment?
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Perhaps I should have replied to your first post which had this,
"Actually no, fuck the terrorists, they're third world noobs living in mud huts and the best they could do in 12 years of trying realyl hard is to hijack a few planes with knives. You have more to fear from your own government than any terrorist."
And that's assuming, of course, that they really did it to begin with. I'm not about to claim otherwise, but the evidence is actually pretty thin and there is a lot of counter-evidence. That's just the truth.
It was unclear what you were talking about. Not deserving "flamebait" but deserving being ignored. Context was really not clear.
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"Perhaps I should have replied to your first post which had this,"
WHOOSH...
It's only unclear because you did not take into account the context in which my comment actually appeared, and then assumed I meant something I did not.
I can't help you with this; it's your problem.
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Gyros (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gyros (Score:5, Funny)
This is why ships still have gyros.
So the only vessels at risk are those with 100% vegetarian crews.
It's probably not too much of an issue then...
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So the only vessels at risk are those with 100% vegetarian crews.
Nah, they have vegetarian gyros too. Usually some sort of falafel "burger" or sometimes tofu.
Results are mixed and variable.
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This is why ships still have gyros.
Are you talking gyro compasses or full blown inertial nav?
Re:Gyros (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of airliners, it is usually full inertial navigation. Usually three independent inertial systems which continual comparison. The navigation system uses all the inertial systems as inputs, usually 1-2 GPS systems as input, and also radio navigation beacons (not very precise, but good enough for anything but landing). The GPS mainly provides long-term stability to the inertial systems, which are the direct reference.
Any area navigation system used in an aircraft for navigation in non-visual conditions has to meet a number of standards, which include the ability to measure its own performance/inaccuracy. I'm not sure if the spoofing in this article would defeat that - it isn't enough to give a false position - you need to give a false position which looks very accurate, and which drifts from the real position slowly enough that if the aircraft has inertial navigation it will consider the change plausible.
Even then, you'll also have to jam all the local radio navigation beacons which is going to be noticed most likely. If the aircraft tunes a radio beacon and gets inconsistent values from every station it tunes (automatically) it will probably report a navigation failure to the crew who will take it into account (and you'd be surprised how well a plane can do with nothing but the magnetic compass, good wind reports, and dead reckoning).
If you did manage to confuse the plane it really would only be a problem low to the ground in fairly mountainous terrain, unless you can keep it up for hours to get it way off course (and the crew will notice when they can't tune stations that are supposed to be in range and ATC will surely notice until they go entirely to ADS-B - and in the case of international flight the air defense identification zones surrounding many countries including the US will have active radar for obvious reasons). Most actual landings use ILS, which is completely independent of GPS - the aircraft won't really descend enough to hit buildings until it is on the ILS glideslope which is guaranteed to be clear. Only an actual GPS-based runway approach would get the plane low enough to hit something unless there are mountains nearby.
So, an attack would be hard to pull off against an airliner. Small planes do not have so much redundancy, but their GPS units still try to evaluate position accuracy and generate warnings (which pilots are trained to heed) when they believe they are having problems.
All that aside, GPS signals really need to have authentication embedded. That said, they would still be vulnerable to replay attacks if the main signal could be jammed and the receiver did not have a sufficiently accurate clock to spot replays (it would have to be VERY accurate over fairly long periods of time).
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Seems easier just to shoot it out of the sky...
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Didn't you learn anything from Dr. Evil? Just shooting them is nowhere near as classy as sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
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That said, they would still be vulnerable to replay attacks if the main signal could be jammed and the receiver did not have a sufficiently accurate clock to spot replays (it would have to be VERY accurate over fairly long periods of time).
Wouldn't it only have to be accurate since the last valid frame?
Nope. If you update your clock against each valid frame then I can introduce drift over time until you're substantially far away from the real signal (at which point you actually reject any real signals you get). The more lag I can introduce, the more flexibility I get to mix and match replayed frames from various satellites to change your position. If you have a GPS running yesterday's clock and I have a record of every frame transmitted for the last 24 hours I can send you an authentic set of GPS signa
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Airplanes have another last ditch fail safe system (granted it only works in the day and when it's reasonably clear). It's called looking out the windows.
Airplanes don't only fly when it is reasonably clear. All that rigor goes into the design so that a plane can fly safely on instruments from takeoff until the wheels hit the ground again (in the case of CatIII ILS).
Or calling the tower and asking where the hell they are (doesn't work everyplace).
I included that in my post, but as I said when everybody switches to ADS-B the only indication the tower will have about your position will be what your GPS unit is telling them. There have actually been accidents in the past when pilots used radar reports of altitude to validate that their own
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They already use both and track the relative error, because that's useful even in normal operation. Inertial tracking systems are subject to drift over time (and are useless when you're not moving). GPS can correct for this drift, but requires external resources. So it's pretty common to tie the systems together and have it whine when the correction the GPS demands is outside the amount of drift expected by the inertial guidance system, because that helps detect normal, non-hacking failures in either system
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It's actually quite simple, almost all ships are tracked via satellite or radar when not in a channel or harbor. There is an authority somewhere depending on your location that knows so they just radio for confirmation to which one is accurate. Or they can pull the really old fashion tricks out and use a sexton or mark their position based on the stars.
It might require them to check more often to determine if they are deviating, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue unless they are piloting into a channe
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This is why ships still have gyros. GPS is too handy not to use, but I'm pretty sure most large oceangoing vessels also have navigation gyros. The question then is, what happens when GPS gets spoofed...does the system/crew assume the GPS is broken or the gyro broken?
You've hit on the real issue - people trust GPS implicitly and become dependent on it. That's why sailors should still learn traditional navigation skills. You can't spoof the sun, moon or stars. LORAN is a good backup but its future is in doubt. There's nothing like running a drill and shutting of the GPS system and seeing what a crew does when that happens.
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Not just gyros, ships still have compasses and, if you are competent, even sextants. (I am not competent, but then, I'm not claiming to be a sailor or other type of boatman.) Part of getting a license is knowing how to navigate.
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This is why ships still have gyros. GPS is too handy not to use, but I'm pretty sure most large oceangoing vessels also have navigation gyros. The question then is, what happens when GPS gets spoofed...does the system/crew assume the GPS is broken or the gyro broken?
If it was only spoofed a little, GPS would probably be assumed to be correct. If there was a big difference maybe I would send someone outside with a magnetic compass- to the best location where ship interference would be minimalized.
Spoofing "just a little" would actually be more dangerous. You could make a ship run aground in narrow channel if nobody was paying attention. However, when ships come into port or through narrow channels, a Pilot from the port comes on board the ship and guides it in. Th
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Ok, I'll bite. What's a DVL? (my usual deacronymizing techniques fail me).
If it's ITAR controlled though, that means a lot of ships won't have it. Best to keep the compass and sextant handy. Maybe even keep your eyes open.
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Apparently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppler_Velocity_Log [wikipedia.org]
So like an optical mouse for ships?
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I speak with authority in these matters because I am a shipyard prostitute.
A time honored profession.
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Iran already did this (Score:2, Interesting)
They already did this trick to snag an american drone. Old news.
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Iran claimed that's what they did.
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Which signal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The P signal is only available to the military. I doubt they're spoofing it. Last I heard the weekly(?) code distributions are such a security pain that sometimes even the military doesn't use it. The military might benefit from an unspoofed P signal, but it won't help civilian planes or ships.
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This is correct. P code isn't very easy to use as it requires first acquiring CA code and then transferring the lock to a decoder. The newer M code is quite a bit more versatile but very little is known about it.
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Could you not still spoof the encrypted signals by time-delaying them, without bothering with the decryption?
GPS is just a bunch of clocks, no? Just record the encrypted signals and play them back with time delays (of a fraction of a second) at higher power designed to give false position readings.
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You can't just "store and forward" them because the received signals are quite noisy (especially before despreading!). You really have to receive and regenerate the signals. It's not a trivial thing to do, but it's not like there are only six people in the world who could do it (I used to work on CSMA and a bit of GPS).
A more technical explanation (Score:4, Informative)
Old news. If you want a less sensationalistic, more technical discussion of how this is done, see this article http://www.gpsworld.com/drone-hack/.
In brief:
1) Yes, it's possible but there are a lot of issues that make it less than practical
2) It's a non-issue for military positioning systems, which use encrypted, time-stamped signals.
3) Experts are already aware of the problem and are working on solutions.
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Old news. If you want a less sensationalistic, more technical discussion of how this is done, see this article http://www.gpsworld.com/drone-hack/ [gpsworld.com].
In brief:
1) Yes, it's possible but there are a lot of issues that make it less than practical
2) It's a non-issue for military positioning systems, which use encrypted, time-stamped signals.
3) Experts are already aware of the problem and are working on solutions.
What issues make it less than practical? I read the article and I didn't see any major problems with doing it, nor did the authors.
As for "experts are already aware of the problem and are working on solutions", it reminds me of the last scene in the 1st Indiana Jones movie, where the Ark of the Covenant is being put into a seemingly endless warehouse. "Don't worry Dr. Jones, we have top people working on it". "Who?" asks Jones. "Top people".
Yes, it is possible to fix, but does that mean it isn't worth payin
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Try reading the paragraph that starts with "Developing a full spoofer-based control system for a UAV is a difficult problem..."
You mean the paragraph that also says "causing a UAV to spin out of control and crash is not difficult with a spoofer"?
"Constructing from scratch a sophisticated GPS spoofer like the one developed by UT is not easy..."
Which ends with "the trend toward software-defined GNSS receivers for research and development, where receiver functionality is defined entirely in software downstream of the A/D converter, has significantly lowered the bar to spoofer development in recent years."
or the one that starts with "There are also a number of promising non-cryptographic techniques for civil GPS spoofing detection...".
Which certainly jibes well with my statement that "it is possible to fix".
You're welcome to pay attention if you feel like it but it won't get the problem fixed any faster.
That's true of most of the news I read. Should I take i
Well, obviously (Score:3)
There's a reason the encryption on the P(Y) signal is part of a system called "anti-spoofing". The potential to spoof the C/A code was understood from the beginning, and it getting cheaper is expected as well.
Still many unanswered questions (Score:3)
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Just because it can be done by highly educated professional researchers who do nothing but try to find ways to do this does not mean terrorists can do it.
No, it doesn't. I'm not going to loose sleep over this. But that doesn't mean it's not a concern and shouldn't be fixed.
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Or, put a battery powered system in a container on that ship. And control it like any other long-distance remote-controlled system.
Ship or Plane???? (Score:3)
a terrorist could take over the navigation of a ship or even a plane,
Put a few dozen of these between LA and Long Beach and you can create traffic jams that will cripple a fundamental portion of the manufacturing supply chain to the US by sending tourists and GPS addicted drivers to the wrong off ramps, causing them to get back on, thereby blocking access to the main arterials and causing miles of gridlock and congestion preventing vital shipment from getting to and from the Ports in a timely manner. And just how long would it take for the DoT or local authorities to realize that a week long Carmageddon was maliciously manufactured?
Archaic Tools (Score:3)
There is this strange device called a...what was it a gain...oh a compass. The cool device that relies on something pretty hard to spoof, Earth's magnetic field as I remember. Ships and airplanes still carry a compass on board (well I know airplanes do) as backup to all that electronic stuff, because every now and then the power goes out and pilots are trained to fly and navigate by compass. They also cross check (or they should) the modern equipment with the analog to validate the primary instruments.
Just because someone says they can do something does not mean its really viable or will work well. Still waiting on flying cars, long lasting batteries, and fusion power plants so this type of drama news is not even close to registering on the danger meter.
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Fusion power? That's 20 years off.
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Touche' However Were there a terrorist bent on effecting my course he/she would need to be pretty damn close to the compass, at which point the captain may become suspicious (one would hope). Yes, I have dealt with the screwdriver effect.
That's how Iran hijacked a US drone (Score:2)
and Obama and the DoD didn't do a damn thing about it.
This is what sensor integration is for!!! (Score:2)
We have gps, gyro's , accelerometers, magnetometers in our Cell phones.
It would seem anyone serious would use GPU in conjuction with Inertial sensors and also include maybe a 180 Sky view to check the sun or stars positions and LORAN, VAR and VOR as well as shortwave, commercial terrestrial TV and Radio broadcast strength, phase, call signs which could also provide decent navigation information.
In addition there are navigation units that combine GPS and GLONASS the Russian version to gain better accuracy
And the children! (Score:2)
What about the children?
007 will take care of this (Score:2)
And he has the right to give on the spot death sentences
Well known (Score:2)
This possibility has been known since a long time.
However the scope is limited by the fact that GPS signals are wea and have a similar power everywhere, which implies that you (sitting on the gorund and beign subject to a 1/r^2 law in the power somebody reseives from you have to be close to the attack target (unless you want to set of everything, including the differential GPS stations) or use a very directed beam (difficult in real life).
It also meant that the vessel you want to control has no other means
Very expensive way to cheat at Ingress? (Score:2)
Although I guess you could teleport a whole army of spoofers around with this.
Only scary when terrorists do it? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
These clowns have no clue about how real navigation SYSTEMS, like the ones I work on, work.
We are so impressed. You've heard of redundancy and sanity checking. Ooh-ahh.
I'm not going to give these idiots what they need ...
Don't worry, they can figure it out just fine without your vast and impressive knowledge.
Re: (Score:2)
Now, he's your boss. For teh win!
Re:Tomorrow Never Dies (Score:5, Funny)
Awesome, we can make James Bond movies happen!
On Slashdot you can easily find the know-how to do everything in a James Bond movie, except get the girl.
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If all you need to tell your bearing is the rudder position, then why was the compass considered a big deal?
Re: (Score:2)
That's true if you suddenly make a major change in heading, but a few degrees is another matter.
Re: (Score:2)
I am far out of any area I actually know about here, but consider this:
What if wind, or ocean currents require a rudder correction to maintain course, and the rudder stays 'locked' so that the needed steering adjustments never happen. I can see that ship getting off course, maybe even catastrophically.
I would think that scenario possible, but if I am mistaken, I would like to be corrected. :-)
You cannot have too much knowledge in life. I would rather learn something, than remain ignorant.
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I wonder who j hazelwood was
Apparently nobody with mod points looked this up. [wikipedia.org] Although I guess if you have to look something up to get the punch line of a joke, maybe it isn't very funny.
Re: (Score:2)