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Ops.group published a report on GPS spoofing back in 2024.[1] It's bad. Ops.group is an organization for dispatchers and pilots, the people who decide the route
by Animats 4mo ago
Ops.group published a report on GPS spoofing back in 2024.[1] It's bad. Ops.group is an organization for dispatchers and pilots, the people who decide the routes aircraft take and fly them. They are really angry about it. Key concerns:
- The greatest safety concern is the degraded functionality of the Ground Proximity
Warning System (GPWS). The system does not operate correctly after spoofing, even
if GPS coverage is restored. The number of false alerts is astounding. ...
- A similar concern is the significant possibility of the GPS Receiver appearing normal
to flight crew after spoofing, but in reality being contaminated with false data. ...
- This year, a 500% increase in spoofing has been observed. On average 1500 flights per
day are now spoofed, versus 300 in Q1/Q2 of 2024...
They included maps. Most of the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe no longer have useful GPS coverage. It's not just jamming. There's active spoofing, which sends out false position info.
And this was before the Iran war.
Before this, everybody in the industry thought GPS solved the aerial navigation problem.
In the US, the FAA wanted to shut down many of the old radionavigation aids.
Now, there's a lot more interest in improving the other systems. The military wants to go mostly inertial and is working on better inertial systems.
[1] https://ops.group/dashboard/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/GPS-Spoofing-Final-Report-OPSGROUP-WG-OG24.pdf https://ops.group/dashboard/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/GPS-S...
- _moof 4mo ago> Before this, everybody in the industry thought GPS solved the aerial navigation problem. Many people in industry believed this but no one with a brain ever did. The vulnerability of GPS has been cause for concern for a long time, and the decimation of the VOR network has always had a lot of people up in arms.
- christophilus 4mo agoIt seems like we have enough satellites in space that are giving off enough unique signals that we could put together a device that solves the GPS problem without needing GPS itself. I wonder what it would take.
- mirashii 4mo agoIt would take those devices having synchronized atomic clocks, which they do not.
- oneshtein 4mo agoAtomic clocks are not precise enough, they need nuclear clocks, which are not developed yet: https://thoriumclock.eu/ https://thoriumclock.eu/
- geerlingguy 4mo agoGPS uses atomic clocks, not sure why we'd need something more precise for a timing reference on any other satellite system, unless you wanted to get like millimeter-level accuracy using nothing but satellites (and that would require a lot more than just a better clock on the sats).
- plasticchris 4mo agoThe clocks aren’t even the biggest source of error in the pseudo ranges.
- oneshtein 4mo agoWith nuclear clocks, GPS will be unnecessary.
- brookst 4mo agoIs it really not possible to converge a location from implicit signals like frequency shift from relative motion? My intuition, maybe wrong, is that with enough compute and a thorough enough ephemeris of what should be broadcasting what, you could derive location.
- maxerickson 4mo agoYour argument needs to be why it is practical in a smallish device, not that it seems possible. Like you first have to infer what satellite you are even measuring, before you can decide where it might be.
- bebe83939 4mo agoBigger WTF is why critical systems still use unencrypted gps signal. It is like using plain SMTP emails for banking transactions, and relying on "sender" for authentification.
- stavros 4mo agoAn even bigger WTF is why GPS data isn't signed with some official key so spoofing is impossible.
- stinkbeetle 4mo agoWhy would that make spoofing impossible?
- stavros 4mo agoBecause attackers wouldn't be able to send legitimate-looking data to GPS receivers any more.
- stinkbeetle 4mo agoYes that's what spoofing is, but why wouldn't they be able to? (EDIT: I see the other reply thread is already asking the same thing, didn't intend to ask about the same thing)
- stavros 4mo agoBecause, due to how cryptography works, nobody other than the entity holding the signing key (ie the one that deployed the satellites) can produce valid signatures for that key.
- 15155 4mo agoBecause an attacker can just replay legitimate broadcasts with slightly skewed time and origin and introduce huge errors into the fix.
- themafia 4mo ago> spoofing I don't understand how "spoof-to" works. If you have to mimic a satellite then isn't everyone going to get a different location? Unless you're tracking a specific target how can you intentionally spoof them to a desired location? I'd assume the best you could do is create a fixed offset. > The military wants to go mostly inertial and is working on better inertial systems. Given the drift rate this is an idea for munitions but exceptionally difficult to actually operate in a vehicle.
- chadgpt3 4mo agoYou mimic several satellites
- azernik 4mo agoClock bias. Because the clocks internal to GNSS receivers are not that accurate, if they're not at the "targeted" location they'll see that all satellites are off by a given time offset, and think that their clock is just off by that much.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 4mo agoThere are low-drift-rate inertial solutions, but they have high cost and big size (i.e. laser gyroscopes and accelerometers, with atomic clocks). So I assume that the research effort is directed towards reducing the cost and size.
- themafia 4mo agoThe problem with that is if you turn off power to the aircraft then the IMU no longer maintains state and you will need to realign it on startup. The procedures for this are broadly incompatible with military missions.