Ghost Ships, Crop Circles, and Soft Gold: A GPS Mystery in Shanghai (technologyreview.com) 47
An anonymous reader shares a report: One night last summer, a ship called the MV Manukai arrived at the port of Shanghai. It would be the American container ship's last stop in China before making its long homeward journey to Long Beach, California. As the crew carefully maneuvered the 700-foot ship through the world's busiest port, its captain watched his navigation screens closely. They showed another ship steaming up the same channel at about seven knots (eight miles per hour). Suddenly, it disappeared from the display. Then it reappeared, then disappeared again. Eventually, mystified, the captain picked up his binoculars and scanned the dockside. The other ship had been stationary at the dock the entire time.
When it came time for the Manukai to head for its own berth, the bridge began echoing to multiple alarms. Both of the ship's GPS units had lost their signals, and its transponder had failed. Even a last-ditch emergency distress system could not get a fix. Now, new research shows the Manukai and thousands of other vessels in Shanghai are falling victim to a mysterious new weapon that can spoof GPS systems. Who could be behind it? The Chinese state? Or could it be daring and sophisticated sand thieves? Read MIT Technology Review story to find out more.
When it came time for the Manukai to head for its own berth, the bridge began echoing to multiple alarms. Both of the ship's GPS units had lost their signals, and its transponder had failed. Even a last-ditch emergency distress system could not get a fix. Now, new research shows the Manukai and thousands of other vessels in Shanghai are falling victim to a mysterious new weapon that can spoof GPS systems. Who could be behind it? The Chinese state? Or could it be daring and sophisticated sand thieves? Read MIT Technology Review story to find out more.
Re:Most "GPS" systems aren't (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true for consumer electronics - and I'm betting entirely irrelevant. Call me skeptical, but somehow I doubt that a container ship with a professional-grade GPS system, that spends virtually all of its time hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the nearest wifi hotspot, is going to be using any of the cheap cost-cutting alternatives found in cell phones. It'd be a Grade A fool that trusts their extremely expensive cargo ship to a cut-rate navigation system.
Re: (Score:2)
The other thing to consider: These ships simply do not operate in environments where they don't have an unobstructed view of the sky. They just wouldn't fit.
Re:Most "GPS" systems aren't (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's not necessarily mutually exclusive. One can use both as a check on each other, when available. It's harder to spoof or jam both. If there is a significant deviation, a warning alarm should sound so that navigators do physical verification.
Wifi improves accuracy (Score:2)
> is going to be using any of the cheap cost-cutting alternatives found in cell phones
Measuring the distance to nearby wifi access points to within +/- 20% is MORE accurate than trying to measure the distance to a satellite to within 0.000001%. Adding terrestrial signals *improves* it (and makes getting a lock much faster).
> spends virtually all of its time hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the nearest wifi hotspot
Which indeed means ships can't use this additional information. There used
Re: (Score:3)
> is going to be using any of the cheap cost-cutting alternatives found in cell phones
Measuring the distance to nearby wifi access points to within +/- 20% is MORE accurate than trying to measure the distance to a satellite to within 0.000001%. Adding terrestrial signals *improves* it (and makes getting a lock much faster).
> spends virtually all of its time hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the nearest wifi hotspot
Which indeed means ships can't use this additional information. There used to be land-based transmitters for this purpose, long-distance references that are closer than satellites, but I don't think they are operable anymore (unless some top secret ones remain). There may still be some public ones, I'm not sure.
Loran is still up and kickin' in close in coastal areas. As are sea floor transponder chart plotters and naval navigation beacons. Large vessels usually have multiple navigation options once they reach inshore waters provided they are not old rust buckets run by super cheap outfits. What ever occured must have really baffled the poor harbor pilot though.
Certainly coast guard and naval vessels have much more than just gps and cell towers happening. There are still lots of good old fashion rdf (radio directi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
" It'd be a Grade A fool that trusts their extremely expensive cargo ship to a cut-rate navigation system." You're probably right, but it does remind me of the quote attributed to the astronaut John Glenn: "I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract."
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why they will make bloody sure their ship gets from A to B successfully and using as little fuel as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
What high end GPS receivers are available these days? There is uBlox who are certainly more expensive but not necessarily all that much better. Everyone else left the market I think.
Problem solves itself (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
But one thing is for certain: there is an invisible electronic war over the future of navigation in Shanghai, and GPS is losing.
And the losers will be the Chinese. If they are responsible for, or can't crack down upon local GPS jamming/spoofing, the insurance rates of ships visiting Chinese ports will go up. And that cost will be tacked on to the cost of their products.
Commerce runs more efficiently where laws and regulations are predictable, sane and enforced equitably.
Re: (Score:1)
They're supposed to use Beidou, the Chinese navigation system.
Obviously China will act to protect its domestic industries and harm foreigners, just like Germany is doing in the Apple story also on the front page right now.
Re: (Score:3)
They call them trucks because they weigh 5 tons! (Score:2)
Those SUV civilian tanks that Americans drive ARE trucks. Not personal cars. Nothig silly about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Those SUV civilian tanks that Americans drive ARE trucks. Not personal cars. Nothig silly about it.
The truck tax break is based entirely on the premise that they are "commercial vehicles" and thus a business expense to be subsidized for the good of the economy. Even with those real truck models actually used often for business this broad-stroke break, unrelated to actual use, is a sham. When it is broadened to include "trucks" that aren't trucks, and are used for business no more often than ordinary cars, it is just a subsidy for the upscale buyer.
Re: (Score:3)
One of Beidou's major design "features" is that it shares a frequency, 1575.42 MHz, with GPS' L1 civilian band. This is the same as Galileo. This works well for improving device compatibility and lowering cost for receivers (easy to build filters that can receive both but minimize interference), while also making it impossible for anyone to jam Beidou without jamming GPS. Jamming GPS would also end up jamming Beidou.
Yes, there are other bands they transmit on that are open for public use, but they're not ne
Re: (Score:2)
One of Beidou's major design "features" is that it shares a frequency, 1575.42 MHz, with GPS' L1 civilian band. This is the same as Galileo. This works well for improving device compatibility and lowering cost for receivers (easy to build filters that can receive both but minimize interference), while also making it impossible for anyone to jam Beidou without jamming GPS. Jamming GPS would also end up jamming Beidou.
They are referring to spoofing GPS rather than jamming it.
Except Beidu deliberately distorts positions. (Score:2)
For secrecy purposes, streets and places will often be half a mile off. It is not to be trusted.
Re: (Score:2)
China legally requires map spoofing. It's why if you go to google maps today, and view any Chinese city in satellite view and overlay mapping data, you'll see that they do not match one another. Roads will be where rivers are. Bridges in satellite view will have no mapping equivalents anywhere near them. And so on, and so on.
This sounds like captain forgot to switch from Western systems to Chinese ones, and so was getting anomalous readings due to this effect. Chinese systems apply the spoofing algorithm in
Re: (Score:2)
Or the ships will just install Beidou receivers that presumably work perfectly in China. Beidou is the Chinese version of GPS.
Russia mandates that any device with a GPS receiver also supports GLONASS, their satellite navigation system.
As a result of this manufacturers of GPS receivers have been adding Beidou and GLONASS support to recent models, as well as European Galileo.
Re: (Score:3)
Or the ships will just install Beidou receivers that presumably work perfectly in China.
Maybe they do. But that's up to the insurance company. If they determine that navigation in Chinese ports is hazardous, whether it be by BeiDou, GLONASS, Galileo or GPS, there will be a surcharge added to their premium. Not because of the accuracy of the chosen system, but because there are 'bad actors' operating in the area jamming some or all navigation signals.
Broken clocks (Score:1)
Marine receivers should have CSACs to maintain AIS clocking during an outage and better reject spoofed signals when re-acquiring signal.
binocs (Score:3)
There's no replacement for those binoculars. (Disclaimer: I was in the US Navy in the early 70s, when binoculars, sextants, analog radar, and LORAN was almost all we had. Plus the Mark I Eyeball.)
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully civilian navigators are still required to at least be proficient in binoculars and sextant. Someway to spot the sun on a cloudy day and an accurate clock should be required too.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, I forgot the chronometer (although I suppose today an electronic clock is at least as accurate, and still immune to anything but an EMP). I don't think we had a way to find the sun on a cloudy day, at least nothing that would allow you to take an accurate local solar noon sighting.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a shame that having a way to find the Sun on a cloudy day seems to have gone out of fashion after the Vikings, who had a Sunstone. I believe the right polarizing will do it but maybe I'm misremembering.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you're correct, but I doubt it's accurate to much less than maybe 10 degrees of latitude (I'm guessing), and dead reckoning is generally much more accurate than that. I suspect the Vikings used it more to tell which way north was, I'm not sure they even had an idea of latitude (although obviously they knew some places were north or south of others).
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe 10 degrees on the worse days like here yesterday where it was pretty dark and pissing of rain. Today, it's bright and a thin high cloud hiding the sun and a sunstone or such would likely be more accurate.
As for latitude, in the far north, it is likely more noticeable as just going a little north or south makes quite a difference in the height of the Sun and length of day.
Clickbait from Slashdot (Score:2)
"Read MIT Technology Review story to find out more."
No, that's not how it works. That's how none of this works. You're supposed to summarize the original article.
Ignoring the grammar fail, the whole clickbait thing is a fail. Next time slashdot editors can't be bothered to read the original article or summarize its contents, please just click "deny."
E
P.S. GPS is know to have failure points. Many countries REGULARLY block or disrupt GPS, including the US military all along the US peninsula. This is noth
Reason: illegal sand mining and oil smuggling ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you are like me, wondering who is doing this ...
No, it is not the Chinese government, nor the Russians
It is illegal activities by certain ships, spoofing other ships:
From the article ...
And then, there is this ...
But all this is not definitive, since the article concludes with:
Re: (Score:2)
You just summarized the sections about AIS spoofing while mostly neglecting the sections about GPS signal spoofing.
Re: (Score:2)
Right.
But the GPS section in the article is inconclusive. The expert quoted says he never saw that pattern, nor a reason for it.
Re: (Score:3)
It happens (Score:1)
How many of us use Bluetooth headphones? Most os us. How many of us have been through heavily built up areas and had the occasional blip of dropped connection between mobile phone and headphones? I get them several times on my daily commute. The world is a torrent of "radio" signals on varying wavelengths, things are going to drop and connect.
As for the Chinese government screwing up GPS in one of the busiest ports in the world, yeah just what the Chinese government needs, a huge disaster with several shipp
Sand thieves?? (Score:1)
I'm no fan of religious nutjobs of any type, let alone desert ones, but ... this is Nazi "The Jew" propaganda territory!
I swear the US gets closer and closer to being a Nazi state every damn day.
Holy shit is this fucked-up. Imagine if we casually talked about Americans that way IN THE NEWS!
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Illegal harvesting of sand is an increasing problem and involves organized crime gangs all over the world. People are literally being killed over construction sand. Also have have been stripping sand from environmentally sensitive areas for decades. And it's getting worse in places like China with it's building boom and rampant corruption.
And yes sand theft does occur in the US on occasion.
isn't this a Bond movie (Score:1)
albeit not a very good one.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Sounds a lot like Tomorrow Never Dies