In 2023, at least 20 civilian aircraft flying by the Center East had been misled by their onboard GPS items into flying close to Iranian airspace with out clearance—conditions that would have provoked a world incident. These planes had been victims of GPS spoofing, during which misleading alerts from the bottom, disguised as reliable alerts from GPS satellites in orbit, trick an plane’s devices into reporting the plane’s location as someplace that it isn’t. Spoofing is a extra subtle tactic than GPS jamming, during which malicious alerts overwhelm a focused GPS receiver till it might probably now not operate.
Long theorized, GPS spoofing assaults have more and more cropped up in civilian airspace lately, prompting issues about this new frontier in digital warfare. IEEE Spectrumspoke with Todd Humphreys of the College of Texas at Austin about how spoofing works and the way plane might be protected against it.
What’s an instance of a GPS spoofing assault?
Todd Humphreys: In 2017, we started to see spoofing assaults taking place within the Black Sea. As time progressed, the spoofing has solely gotten extra subtle and extra widespread. These days, for those who’re within the Jap Mediterranean, and also you’re on a flight sure for Turkey or Cyprus or Israel, it’s very likely that the GPS items in your plane will get spoofed. They are going to point out a place on the Beirut airport or in Cairo. And it’s as a result of Israel is sending out alerts that idiot GPS receivers for tons of of kilometers across the nation.
How can spoofing be detected?
Humphreys: It’s provable that you just can not, in all circumstances, detect spoofing. That’s as a result of GPS is a one-way system. It broadcasts alerts, however it doesn’t take any enter from the receivers. So there’s at all times the opportunity of any individual broadcasting a lookalike sign and fooling a receiver.
How can airways scale back the possibilities of their planes’ GPS items being spoofed?
Humphreys: There’s an antenna on the entrance of enormous industrial plane, and within the aft additionally, there’s an antenna. Combining these collectively and analyzing the alerts from them would allow you to detect nearly all circumstances of spoofing.
So what’s the catch?
Humphreys: I spoke with Boeing about this a few years in the past. I mentioned, “Look, I’d wish to give you a method of mixing the alerts from these two completely different antennas in order that you could possibly extra readily detect spoofing.” And so they identified that it was crucial for his or her programs that these antennas function fully independently as a result of they’re there for redundancy. They’re there for security causes.
Will the combat towards spoofing at all times be an arms race?
Humphreys: There may be typically a trade-off between conventional security on the one hand—and however, purposeful assaults from strategic adversaries. So it actually is dependent upon what you’re attempting to guard your self from. Is it that possibly one in every of your inner GPS antennas is simply going to spontaneously fail, which does occur? Or is it that your most urgent concern is being caught within the crossfire of a conflict zone and having your GPS receiver spoofed with out understanding? Sadly, it’s robust to deal with each of those issues with the identical {hardware} on the identical time.
This text seems within the January 2025 problem as “5 Questions for Todd Humphreys.”
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