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Researchers Mount Successful GPS Spoofing Attack Against Road Navigation Systems
- basicplus2 8y agoIn the sixties a system of wires buried in the centre of the road lanes was invented to guide autonomous vehicles. they could have specific signals injected to specify what road and what lane etc This would be a far more robust and simpler way of achieving autonomous vehicle use.
- petee 8y agoSounds like an installation and maintenance nightmare. Something like identical rfid chips could provide similar data, and you could simply scatter a handful into the asphalt as it is poured. Or only put chips whenever the road diverges from a straight line
- kayfox 8y agoThis sounds somewhat impractical, heres some reasons why: 1. Concrete and asphalt significantly attenuate radio signals, especially reinforced concrete. 2. Both concrete and asphalt expand and contract, and would likely damage the chips. 3. Asphalt isn't exactly solid at all times, compounding the issue above. 4. Reading said chips would be difficult, as they would only be in range for a few tens of milliseconds.
- petee 8y agoGood point on #1 & 4, it'd have to be really near the top, and would need super fast read speeds; although #2+3 would be non issues if properly encased. Crazy idea: turn road stripes into magnetic tape, encode the data and read it like a tape player :P
- tuukkah 8y agoRegarding #4, I know RFID chips and readers are used for positioning in the Helsinki subway, but I don't know if they have some kind of special antennas allowed by the tracks and the long cars.
- Fnoord 8y agoPossibly also Eurobalise? [1] The Berlin S-Bahn's ZBS (basically "tram") also uses it. But the U-Bahn ("metro") isn't mentioned, and no metro system is mentioned on that Wikipedia page. So I suppose it is some kind off underground variant? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548552
- tuukkah 8y agoI don't know if Eurobalise is based on RFID. Here's some more public info on the Helsinki RFID case: "rugged, intelligent and innovative turnkey solutions for railroad infrastructure providers and train operators based on passive Gen2 RFID technology." https://turckvilant.com/success_story/helsinki-metro/ https://turckvilant.com/success_story/helsinki-metro/ And here's a reverse system where the track identifies the passing wagons: https://turckvilant.com/success_story/running-at-250km-h/ https://turckvilant.com/success_story/running-at-250km-h/
- kalleboo 8y agoRe: #4, this type of technology is already in use for trains and works at speeds of up to 500 km/h. Of course those are always perfectly aligned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobalise https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobalise
- Kadin 8y agoVery cool -- I was not aware of this. It's interesting that RFID developed out of, partly, a desire by freight train operators to track traincars as they moved around switching yards (moving past fixed readers). The Eurobalise system is sort of the reciprocal of that idea.
- nine_k 8y agoDefinitely just throwing RFIDs into the asphalt would be inefficient. They could instead be mounted on the lane-separation poles / walls, on the cat-eye embedded marks, and other things that are installed on the road anyway, and have a good protection and line-of-sight.
- Kadin 8y agoPutting an RFID chip into the lane reflectors / raised pavement markers seems like it would be a good step, and could be useful both to autonomous systems and driver-assist / navigation systems. I doubt it would add a significant percentage to their cost. The nice thing is that you really don't need to use any intelligence when placing the markers. They could be permanently set with a random GUID at time of manufacture, and then just installed in the road. After installation, someone (e.g. Google Maps car or crowdsourced project) could drive the road and cross-reference the RFID GUIDs to their actual location.
- asteli 8y agoA metal strip laid along the intended path would be a more elegant, scalable method. We already have the means for producing bulk steel extrusion, and it would be a simple enough matter to have a vehicle follow a strip like that. Simply lower a cam follower to near-ground level, and let the mechanical forces do the steering for you. Of course, you could opt for multiple strips with convex upper surfaces, and wheels with concave ones, such that you obviate the need for a cam follower - gravity provides the forces needed to center a wheel along its guidance strip. If you wanted to bring an Uber/Lyft/Didi model into this, you'd have multiple riders sharing the vehicle (netting them a lower fare, of course), and the conveyance would make several stops along the way. It's true that this might not offer door-to-door convenience, but apparently Uber et al have had success with getting their riders to walk short distances to catch their rides, so we know that it's a viable business model. I've been sitting on some of these ideas for years. Send me your VC contacts, I'd love to get in touch.
- taneq 8y agoIf you expose the metal strip you could use it as a power rail for electric cars, too! Although that would leave your highways being potentially deadly to walk on... Edit: Also if you're using shaped wheels to guide the car along the road, I think we've just reinvented the tram.
- tpxl 8y agoThat's the point, this is a tram. Autonomous electric mini-trains would be far better than whatever we have today and will have in the near future.
- icebraining 8y agoI quite like trams (especially those from my home town[1]), but there's nothing simple about installing a continuous metal strip on every road. They were replacing an intersection of tram lines near where I lived in Brussels, and it took them over six months for the whole process, with tremendous disruption for the whole area. [1] https://www.lisbonlux.com/images/transportation/rua-augusto-rosa.jpg https://www.lisbonlux.com/images/transportation/rua-augusto-... https://st.depositphotos.com/1000848/4380/i/950/depositphotos_43804127-stock-photo-interior-of-an-old-lisbon.jpg https://st.depositphotos.com/1000848/4380/i/950/depositphoto...
- Theodores 8y agoHere is a classic clip from the 1970's as to where the future was going to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ATNdGVpH8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ATNdGVpH8A Wires under the road to message drivers and roadside transmitters never caught on but a lot could be done with very basic electronics.
- chippy 8y ago"Researchers Mount Successful Attack on Navigational Wires Buried Under Roads Using Commonly Found Garden Implements"
- code_duck 8y agoNo more than likely that’s attacks on fiber optic cables near roadways. Anyhow, I think the plan is to put it beneath the road surface.
- Kadin 8y agoIf you're fine with physically digging up roads in order to cause car crashes, you can do that regardless of whether the vehicles on them are autonomous or not...
- walterbell 8y agoIs this applicable to aircraft?
- Bucephalus355 8y agoYes, but you can also navigate via radio beacons, or by simple map and protractor if you really had too. Obviously, planes took off and landed just fine for many years before GPS was invented / released to the public. Ironically the incident that caused it to be released was flight KAL 007 from Anchorage to Seoul. Plane misnavigated into Soviet airspace and was shot down. A congressman aboard, plus about 200 others, were killed.
- tinus_hn 8y agoYou can also navigate a car using a map. The point of a spoof is misdirection.
- dalore 8y agoI'm pretty sure you could replace a paper map in a car with a fake paper map. Analog spoofing.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoSomeone hacking your paper, in person, means you have much larger problems. Most hacks rely on attacks of scale. They don't care about you. They care about some percentage of "you" that makes their hack work. Of course, the very hacking has changed significantly since I started years ago. It used to be about exploration and investigation - it was much more akin to trespassing than anything else. Now, it's about making money and influence control. That saddens me.
- isostatic 8y agoAnalog DOSsing in WW2: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205019014 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205019014 "A signpost in Surrey being dismantled as part of a campaign to remove everything which may prove of value to the enemy, should invasion occur."
- thermodynthrway 8y agoI don't think this is really news. Anyone with an SDR good enough could easy replicate and alter GPS signals. Since the satellites are so far away, spoofing and jamming are simple affairs. You could affect GPS for miles with something you can carry in your pocket. You can see a crude form of this around tall buildings. Multipath from large structures is enough to "spoof" GPS by hundreds of meters.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe novel part here is tacking on the map data to only generate malicious instructions that are plausible. Not a massive hurdle but not something you do in an afternoon either.
- paulsutter 8y agoGPS messages are not cryptographically signed so of course they can be spoofed. Who designed these things?
- engi_nerd 8y agoGPS messages for civilian use are unencrypted. The US Military has access to another set of signals that ARE encrypted.
- isostatic 8y agoCan still be jammed of course, but hacking GPS was the plot of the Bond Film "Tomorrow Never Dies", where Rupert Murdoch attempts to instigate a global war to sell more newspapers
- paulsutter 8y agoSigning messages is completely separate from encryption. Also there is no longer separate quality gps for military vs civilian use: https://www.cnet.com/news/celebrating-10-years-of-gps-for-the-masses/ https://www.cnet.com/news/celebrating-10-years-of-gps-for-th...
- engi_nerd 8y agoFair point on signed vs encrypted, I was simply pointing out that the ordinary civilian GPS isn't all there is. And while that L1 GPS signal has had selective availability turned off, that can always be turned back on again. Plus, using the military parts of L2 GPS in combination with L1 do give a higher accuracy than civilian GPS units can achieve.
- gsich 8y agoNavstar claimed that this would not be possible anymore, but I find that hard to believe.
- Kadin 8y agoThere is presently no difference in accuracy between military and civilian GPS signals. The civilian / unencrypted stream is no longer intentionally degraded, as it once was (via "Selective Availability"). But there are still multiple datastreams, and the military one is still encrypted, and the military retains the ability to degrade or disable or degrade the civilian/unencrypted signal if circumstances require it, although it is hard to imagine a circumstance where this would be desirable, given the proliferation of civilian GPS receivers among military personnel, disruption to civil aviation / airlift capability, etc. The military GPS signal from the Block III satellites is called "M-Code": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Military_(M-code) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Military_(M-code)