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Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials (msn.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the up-in-the-air dept.
GPS spoofing attacks are increasingly disrupting commercial flights worldwide, with over 1,100 daily incidents reported in August, up from dozens in February. The false signals, primarily originating from Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, confuse cockpit navigation systems, triggering false alarms and misdirecting flight paths, WSJ reports.

Pilots report clocks resetting, erroneous warnings, and navigation errors lasting minutes to entire flights. While no major safety incidents have occurred, aviation officials warn that managing these disruptions could overburden crews during emergencies. Airlines, manufacturers, and regulators are scrambling for solutions, but new equipment standards to combat spoofing won't be ready until next year at the earliest. In the meantime, pilots receive briefings on identifying and responding to potential attacks, sometimes instructed to ignore safety system warnings.
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Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials More

Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air-Safety Officials

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  • If we still had astrodomes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), we wouldn't have to worry so much about flying blind!
    C'mon Boeing! What were you thinking when you go rid of these?

    (before you rip me. I'm joking.)

    • There is a better method: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

      Also, GPS frequencies are supposed to be licensed and messing with it should be highly illegal, to the point that war actions should be taken to protect it. The control of which should be automatic to prevent fuckery

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HBI ( 10338492 )

        Dead reckoning is no substitute for calculating a latlong using a sextant and a clock. It's the manual equivalent of inertial navigation and has lots of error built in. Practical classes in naval science demonstrated this conclusively even in an inshore context. Try the same in the open ocean and huge errors can open up.

      • Or it's modern cousin inertial navigation.

      • Also, GPS frequencies are supposed to be licensed and messing with it should be highly illegal

        I'm sure that countries currently engaged in war crimes and genocide will be intimidated by the fact that jamming GPSes is naughty.

        • Nations can do whatever they want with frequencies in their own border. But in another sovereign space, it should be considered an act of war, and be responded to in kind.
    • Seems like an okay idea to me. But nobody knows much about astronomy anymore. We should computerize the sextant, and transmit all the star chart data from a centralized server via satellite telephone. Better put a paywall in there, just to be safe.
      • You will have to make the computerized sextant able to filter out all of those low orbit internet satellites that Elon and company keeps throwing up there.

        • That is easy.
          A) they are moving
          B) they have uninteresting angles for measurements ...
          C) many stars (or planets) have a pretty unique colour

      • We should computerize the sextant, and transmit all the star chart data from a centralized server via satellite telephone.

        Just don't fly though the Bassen Rift.....

      • As far as I know using a Sextant is still standard education for pilots at sea and air.
        However during daytime it is rarely useful in air, and at night two crew members have to measure same time, because the plane is so fast.

        • I completed ground school for a private pilot's license in 1969. No sextant. I bet not even for commercial pilots. Mail and compass.

      • Could you use multilateration off LEO satellites like Starlink?

    • Astrodomes won't work under cloud cover. Future systems may have to rely a combination of astrodomes, AI ground feature/light identification, commercial radio wave broadcasts, special radio & laser beacons near airports and waypoints, and momentum/gyroscope estimation.

      The tricky part is what do pilots do if the different sources contradict. Software bugs, lightning, etc. will occasionally bleep shit up.

    • If we still had astrodomes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), we wouldn't have to worry so much about flying blind!
      C'mon Boeing! What were you thinking when you go rid of these? (before you rip me. I'm joking.)

      Newer versions were getting too big [wikipedia.org] ... :-)

    • I heard that commercial airliners were required to carry a sextant as part of the standard flight/emergency gear up until the 1970s. It's quite hard to use such a device without the 360 view of an astrodome but still doable. (Imagining a flight crew member asking a passenger to move while he peers out a passenger window using such an old fashioned sailing ship era navigation device to get bearing information)
  • Could this kind of technology that we are hearing about now, possibly be a plausable explanation for the well known trope that some of the pilots report in history of things like gauges and dials failing , radio contact fading, when encountering so called UFOs .

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Incidents were rare until the Ukraine invasion. Occam's razor says Putie & Friends, not aliens.

  • Having personally experienced this but in a marine environment it's very disconcerting. Luckily, ships don't fall out of the water, so the danger is far less. But, you still have the possibility of running into another ship that is struggling with the same problem. Ships tend to stay together while underway. None of our electronics were cable of dealing with this. As often as not, we would happen everything off and do it the old fashioned way with celestial navigation.
    • Turn not happen

    • >As often as not, we would happen everything off and do it the old fashioned way with celestial navigation.

      Does anybody still carry a sextant and know how to use it? And what about cloud cover? Without a sextant, how long do you trust a chart with a compass once you determine your electronics are not returning correct location data?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Does anybody still carry a sextant and know how to use it?

        The US Navy has resumed teaching celestial navigation. In case someone shoots all the satellites out of the sky.

        how long do you trust a chart with a compass

        Charts have pretty good depth information for popular routes. Particularly in close to shore. There's also RDF [wikipedia.org] off known transmitter locations. Or triangulation off charted landmarks.

        • LORAN anyone? French Frigate Shoals needs to be re-manned. I can think of a number of people I would send there.

          • When I was a kid sailing the Great Lakes... Loran was it. Loran-C, I think, though don't ask me what that was.

            These days, having cell towers host mandatory beacons might not be the worst idea.

      • A card and a compass is not to bad.
        But it has minimum two problems:
        A) magnetic deviation, that means the magnetic field generally does not point to true north, and it actual deviation varies over the chart
        B) Wind, in an airplane it is diffbicult to judge from where the wind is coming and how strong it is.
        On a ship B can be mitigated by taking bearings from landmarks or stars close to the horizon

  • 1100 incidents per day?

    1100 incidents per month?

    1100 day-incidents per month?

  • The October 2022 Texas jamming incident [at DFW airport] remains a mystery.

    ...but it's aliens!

  • You should never be trusting the computers to the exclusion of your common sense. This includes creating machines where the computers override the humans controlling them without and 'override override' if the human, after the computer override, determines the computer is in error. If you're going to die, you want to make sure you have the opportunity to at least resist your fate, right?

    Every time humanity automates something it's awesome until somebody finds a way to exploit it to hurt people. And then

    • Every time humanity automates something it's awesome until somebody finds a way to exploit it to hurt people. And then they use the exploit.

      Aviation GPS: "Turn left and extend flaps to full. Enjoy the scenic ground view at five thous...." *boom*

      You say that like people need to be exploited for harm to occur.....

    • Over here, on commercial airliners, every GPS has a warning placard right above the unit: "NOT TO BE USED AS PRIMARY NAVIGATION AID"

      Most every parking stand has GPS position printed on a large placard where flying crew can use it to initialize the inertial nav system. Then INS should take it for the rest of the flight.

      The GPS probably remains active to double check, but really, that's only for in case the triple redundant INS fails. GPS remaining active as standby may confuse flying crew when it goes off wh

    • You should never be trusting the computers to the exclusion of your common sense. This includes creating machines where the computers override the humans controlling them without and 'override override' if the human, after the computer override, determines the computer is in error. If you're going to die, you want to make sure you have the opportunity to at least resist your fate, right?

      Every time humanity automates something it's awesome until somebody finds a way to exploit it to hurt people. And then they use the exploit. We should just assume that every tool we create WILL be exploited and try our best to use the tools but not be mindlessly dependent on them.

      But, there's no profit in telling people not to trust the machines. The machines will save us. Self-driving will stop all driving accidents. AI will solve climate change, and create space stations we can't. We're creating computer god, which will solve every problem humanity has ever faced! TRUST THE MACHINES!

      As much as I'm in agreement with everything you've said, and have been my entire life, the narrative most of the public is being fed right now is precisely the opposite. I do believe this could be one

  • Map, compass, stopwatch, E6B flight computer.

    Also electronic warfare proof.

    • Sure, in visual conditions, but a lot of flights are in instrument conditions. There are still some ground stations, but there are also a lot of instrument approaches that are GPS only. I don't know if those can be used by airliners, but I think so

      • My comment was semi in jest. But...

        It does worry how much reliance we put on tech in general, but for navigation in particular. I would consider basic map reading to now be a lost art.

    • You will not have GPS and you will like it ... in the Bermuda Triangle

  • We've been doing it with missile guidance systems for decades.

    • Heck, most mapping apps will do a good job with dead reckoning in a tunnel.

      • Heck, most mapping apps will do a good job with dead reckoning in a tunnel.

        Road/highway/railway tunnels are "simple" tubes between 2 points, like a drinking straw. Not much to go wrong there ... in terms of navigation.

        Now tunnels dug for mining or military defense purposes are usually much more involved.

  • Perhaps LORAN-C/D/E or whatever the latest version is?

  • Why doesn't aviation use receivers with phased array antennas on top of the plane which block out below the horizon sources and can determine if they are getting signals from the direction of the satellites?

    • PS. oops, I knew this from the previous time I considered this and looked it up, but I forgot ... ITAR has held back export (and thus manufacture) of modern near jamming proof GPS receivers.

      https://www.gps.gov/governance... [gps.gov]
      "Prohibition: Federal regulations (ITAR) have precluded use of more than three elements in beam-steering antenna"

    • This is what I was wondering.

      Why the hell would an aircraft 7 miles up in the air want to ever get signal from a ground station that can be screwed with far easier than satellites in geosynchronous orbit?

      I mean, sure - more signal sources means higher accuracy. That is, right up until the ground stations start giving conflicting info and skew your flight path into restricted airspace...

      • That is not how ground stations work.
        A navigation beacon is on the map
        It looks a bit like a radar antenna.
        It has a noted rotation speed and sends every degree it moves an indicator in which direction it is looking
        Basically 360Â minus current bearing.
        So if it looks at 1Â east, it will sent a 365. Because you look at it from a 365Â angle.
        Depending how fast it rotates, you get a signal ever 15 seconds or so.
        With two beacons, you know where you are, and with compass it is difficult to put up enou

  • From the list of countries in the description, the GPS jamming is an attempt to thwart drone strikes which are increasingly common. The airliners are getting the splash from this.

  • You ain't seen nuthin' yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2024 @06:26PM (#64814485)

    Thanks to Israel, we now know how easy it is to turn wireless devices into bombs on a wholesale basis. Given their lack of concern for collateral damage, I imagine this will make air travel a bit of a gamble for a while. And, of course, if Israel can do it, why can't somebody else?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm surprised that we haven't already seen a ban on pagers and walkie talkies on aircraft. Maybe they think that their explosive detection equipment is good enough to find them.

      Or maybe it was all just theatre to begin with, and they won't do anything that embarrasses Israel.

      • I have a feeling that's one of the things we'll never get an answer to. I find it moderately terrifying that when Israel says, "Jump!", Uncle Sam asks, "How high?"

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          There are a lot of Jews in American, and a lot of Irish. Sure enough, the US tends to side with Israel and Ireland.

          The thing about Israel though is that it's a self-proclaimed ethnostate. Many Jews don't come from there, and don't want to go there, and oppose what Israel is doing. For some reason they are mostly ignored though.

    • Xrays in the security line are specifically designed to flag up densities of things - explosives are generally pretty dense (otherwise they don't explode very well). It turns out explosive and battery are quite similar, so you have to show some electronics separately so they can make a half decent analysis of it without all the other crap in your bag photoboming the picture.

      So at worst, you might have to separate your walkie talkie, your pager and your fax machine as you go through security.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 4im ( 181450 )

      "wholesale", "lack of concern for collateral damage"?

      They specifically intercepted a shipment of pagers for a terrorist organization. The members of that organization were targeted. Most victims were the targeted members. To me, that sounds a lot more specific than downing an entire building with possibly hundreds of people to get at one specific person.

      I'm not condoning using these tactics, but they do seem a hell of a lot more legit than e.g. the Hamas attacks of october 7. Especially if it turns out that

      • So are you OK with the tens of thousands of women and children Israel has slaughtered in Gaza, allegedly to get the bad guys? If the US worked like Israel, they'd drop a couple 500 pound bombs on a school to kill the shooter who's killing students inside it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 4im ( 181450 )

          I specifically addressed the exploding pagers. No more, no less. I also added "I'm not condoning using these tactics". Why do you try to bait me into extending this into anything else? No, don't answer that. I'm done here.

  • I recall having to load GPS crypto keys periodically for the weapons system we maintained.
    ( I don't recall how often we did it: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly ? pfff )

    Why couldn't we have multiple key levels ?

    Keyset 1: Military Applications
    Keyset 2: Critical Infrastructure ( like airlines, shipping, etc ) Applications
    Keyset 3: Pick something important that needs verifiable GPS

    Can rotate the keys on whatever timetable you want. . . . .

    Or, at the bare minimum, cryptographically sign the data to verify the aut

    • The keys weren't keys and are not keys.
      They are correction data that correct the intentional misplacement we used to have in GPS in older days.
      Has nothing to do with encryption.

      • Interesting.

        Probably an offset to the Selective Availability setup back then. ( This was early 90's )

        I do recall the " non-keys " were kept on what looked like a tape measure and we would spool out x amount
        of paper tape that contained the information we keyed into the system. These tape measure devices were
        kept in the crypto locker onboard ship and were two person control items.

        I do believe they are updating the newer systems to actually encrypt one or more of the channels though.
        That should solve the pro

    • You actually could. But you need to replace the satellites to do it, and that takes a while. There is a new "critical infrastructure" signal (L5) scheduled to become usable, but it doesn't appear to have anti-spoof, so even if you could get the US interested it would likely be decades before such a signal became available.

  • Planes are fitted with Inertial navigation system [wikipedia.org], they can fly without GPS. And they did so before GPS was invented.
  • We have 400,000+ cell sites installed in the U.S. We know where all of them are. We know their frequencies. A plane at 30,000 feet has 40 to 200 of them within 5 miles of them. It shouldn't be that hard to turn this into a geolocation system. This patent shows how to geolocate signals like this from a plane using a GPU: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsea... [uspto.gov]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      A network that's even easier to interfere with and which over foreign soil is controlled by the exact states that are manipulating GPS? What a great idea!

      I don't think anyone flying over the US is worried about GPS interference. It's warzones where a) cell site aren't exactly reliable, b) they are often controlled by the opposing sides and even in a co-operative country are likely to be providing false information in those circumstances, c) they are often shut down and that's far easier to do than jamming

      • The TOPOGRAPHY of the cell network cannot be interfered with, other than of course by turning off the power to all cell towers. If the DoD can track individual cell phones from a plane, then localizing the much higher transmitting power cell sites and using their relative positions to compute the actual position of the plane is easy.

  • The beginning of truly nasty warfare. Cell phone hacks and redirection are another EW arena.

    I think cyber security breaches are also EW, at another layer.

    Watch for deeply embedded AI hacks, waiting to be triggered when most advantageous, then to disappear. Pop-up AI hacks will be hard to deal with. How will you know if your AI was taught this or not, unbeknownst to you...

    You will be unaware of the best EW attacks until they are activated.

  • We need to bring back LORAN [wikipedia.org], at least as a backup.

  • Not from Ukraine. Observe the GPS distortion impact maps, they're all around Kaliningrad. That's where Finnish and Baltic airlines needed to turn back airplanes on occasion. That's the russians' doing.

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