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GPS Jamming for $50
Anonymous writes "One of the newest hacker tools out there is a homemade GPS jammer. According to this article in Computerworld, such jammers can be built with $50 worth of electrical parts. Phrack has published a how-to aimed at inexpensive GPS-based navigation and "hidden tracking devices.""
It is right here
Love them phrack DNS'.
suddenly I feel very tired
from the article:
"The U.S. Department of Defense, which faces the possibility of having its GPS-guided weapons come up against Russian-made GPS jammers in Iraq, has antijamming technology at its disposal."
Ahh, here it is, in Newsday from January 11th.
Not to worry. I think Saddam may be recruiting a new posse as it is.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
From the Phrack text: "This device will have no effect on the precise positioning service (PPS) which is transmitted on the GPS L2 frequency of 1227.6 MHz and little effect on the P-code which is also carried on the L1 frequency. There may be a problem if your particular GPS receiver needs to acquire the P(Y)-code through the C/A-code before proper operation. This device will also not work against the new upcoming GPS L5 frequency of 1176.45 MHz or the Russian GLONASS or European Galileo systems. It can be adapted to jam the new civilian C/A-code signal which is going to also be transmitted on the GPS L2 frequency."
Also, there are other ways to deliver munitions. And there are other ways to jam munitions.
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
The US jammed GPS in Afghanistan while fighting the Taliban. Somehow this did not impair the ability of the American military equipment.
More to the point, the Joint Program Office in charge of the GPS has known about cheap, readily available jammers since at least 1995. There's been an ongoing program since then called NAVWAR (NAVigation WARfare) researching ways to harden military GPS receivers against jamming
From the FAA's web site:
GPS is not yet approved as a sole means of IFR navigation. It can, however, be used as a supplemental system for en route navigation and nonprecision approaches.
Yes, FAA does certify GPS navagation systems, but it is ILLEGAL for a PILOT to use GPS as PRIMARY navigation. All the certification means is that it is legal to install the device into the aircraft.
How about (like an AC mentioned above) some HARMs? (High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles for you non-military-buffs). Nifty little missiles, designed to take out SAM sites, and enemy radar installations.
This is always a problem with active weapons systems, and active countermeasures... you broadcast your location to anybody who cares to listen. It's just like a HAM Radio foxhunt (that's an event where somebody plants a transmitter somewhere in a city, and a bunch of directional-antenna wielding HAMs try to find it). The military version just has slightly more lethal consequences for the "fox."
Jammers are great, until the high-explosive warheads start homing in on your signal.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I read some article a few months ago about GPS jamming.. While the offical miliary GPS systems are supposedly a little more resistent to this type of easily-built jammer, the article said that many weapons used by the military in fact rely on civilian GPS transmissions, because the signals are stronger and easier to pick up. So this would make many weapons (if the article I read is correct) pretty much ineffective if they actually do use the civilian GPS system. Sorry I'm not more specific with details here- read the article a long time ago, maybe in NY Times...? Either that, or it was all some wild dream.
any radio signal can be jammed. GPS signals are especially easy to jam because the satelites are 10 thousand miles away and have low power transmitters to begin with since electricity in space is precious.
:)
How big does the device need to be? Not very big. No bigger than a typical GPS receiver. What's FAR more important is the size of your antenna. A nice parabolic dish (say, an old DSS dish) with 24db gain could probably be used to jam a GPS receiver from a mile away while running very low power. A lower gain antenna could be just as effective if the power were higher, though, and would be less directional to boot. They pack 100 watt transmitters into a case the size of a car stereo these days, so the device definately doesn't NEED to be very big.
Of course that's assuming you want to block from a good distance, if you are within about 10 feet of the GPS receiver, you can probably jam it with a few miliwatts of power and a wet piece of string for an antenna. You could make a GPS jamming PC card, or SD card even. Oh wait SD is a stupid closed standard. But a low power unit could be easily be made small enough to, say, jam up your ass.
This isn't new, or revolutionary, or even news worthy. Electronic warfare has been around as long as electronics and the bad guys are always trying to jam the good guys comms and vice versa. Ever since that bozo went on the news and talked about this everyone's had their panties in a bunch. Iraq could probably shit out a couple of ghetto GPS jammers but I doubt if they have the resources to produce the 10,000 units they'd need to really make a measureable difference in the outcome of the war. Oh and by the way we can play the same game by using directional antennas on our receivers to reject jamming signals.
And one final note, anything that emits an RF signal is easily locateable. See radio direction finding, ham radio fox hunts, etc. Shit, our forces could just home in on the jamming signal
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I think if the Iraqis think they can jam GPS signals they're going to be sadly mistaken.
People forget that commercial GPS receivers found on handhelds and automobiles rely on a single antenna, which is relatively easy to "spoof." Military GPS receivers found on JDAM and JSOW precision-guided munition systems use multiple antennas to receive GPS signals, so they are far less suspectible to "spoofing" by jamming devices. Besides, turning on the jammer is going to make it real susceptible being attacked by a HARM missile.
That's because the guided munitions used in the Gulf War were laser-guided. The beams were weakened or blocked and the ordinance would go off target. Todays JDAMs are guided by GPS, and the military has gotten around the sticky problem of GPS jamming in the last decade. In Afghanistan, the target hit success rate was over 90%. The majority of missed targets were the result of human error by target locators on the ground entering the improper target coordinates.
Military ordnance is not intended to WORK
That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've read in very long time.
Derek
My point -- even if the GAO's conservative estimate of only 20% hitting their target is correct, it is FAR better than the alternative of dumb bombs. So to say they're produced just for industry profits is stupid. At worst, it is your typical manufacturer's propaganda, somewhat like Microsoft saying Windows is secure.
"While JDAMS are "GPS-aided," [USAF Maj. Gen.]Leaf said, they also have backup inertial navigation systems that "will still be precise enough for almost any target that we face."
t ml .
http://www.rense.com/general33/ussmart.htm
Yes, JDAM's use GPS. But there are many other types in the inventory. LGB, IR, TV guided, and the old standbys, CCIP (Continuously Computed Impact Point) and CCRP (Continuously Computed Release Point).
Further, the military might even do the jamming itself.
"The military will jam GPS in any future conflict to avoid its hostile use. Several initiatives have been launched by the Dept of Defense (DoD) to allow its forces to use the GPS signal in a jamming environment, including a new code broadcast by more powerful satellites and protected with enhanced cryptography."
http://industry.esa.int/CGForum/get/indust02/21.h
Many companies are working on, or have fielded, anti-jam GPS equipment.
In the possible coming conflict in Iraq, this is not a dealbreaker. Even if ol' Saddam decides to deploy these things en masse.
In the last Gulf War, most of the precision ordinance was laser-guided. Lasers are very problematic because they are scattered by fog, mist, smoke, and dust. The GPS-guided munitions that are presumably going to be used in any upcoming war use radio signals that do not have this problem. Instead, it seems as though they will be jammed. The Small-Diameter Bomb project being pursued by Boeing is going to use a new GPS system that will be more robust against jamming.
Also, one can argue that thousands of warheads were necessary. The Russians had many, many warheads, too. Whoever lost superiority would be vulnerable to a first-strike that knocked out all missiles accurate enough to retaliate against armored silos.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
man uuencode
man uudecode
sheesh....