Cracking the GPS Galileo Satellite

Glyn writes "Newswise is reporting the the encryption in the Galileo GPS signal has been broken. The pseudo random number generator used to obscure the information stored in the Galileo GPS signal has been broken. From the article: 'Members of Cornell's Global Positioning System (GPS) Laboratory have cracked the so-called pseudo random number (PRN) codes of Europe's first global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codes secret. That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices -- including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles -- that need PRNs to listen to satellites.'"

Comments

Re:Two Interesting Points

[NoSuchGuy]

2. According to Cornell's lawyers, the DMCA was not a concern because navigation data is not, and cannot be, copyrighted.

There is no navigation data in the signal. Its a time signal/timestamp that gets transmitted.

The "logic" of your navigation system is inside the "box" in your car/ship/.. The box calculates the position depending on the timesignal.
If your system can't read the time signal you can not calculate your position.

If the time signal is encrypted it may become a DMCA matter in US. Would be nice to follow: "US Army sued for USD 12 billion of DCMA violation ..."

Openly available signals

[pe1chl]

"Imagine someone builds a lighthouse," argued Psiaki. "And I've gone by and see how often the light flashes and measured where the coordinates are. Can the owner charge me a licensing fee for looking at the light? ... No. How is looking at the Galileo satellite any different?"

You would expect it to work that way, but NO. Today, it really is possible to transmit information into publicly receivable media and still be able to prohibit the use of it and to do the research necessary to make the signal useful (in the above case: measure the coordinates).

For example, when someone sends a TV signal from a satellite you can look at the signal but it would be illegal without the proper license to try to find out how the bits sent down can be reconstructed into a viewable TV picture.
Sure this used to be legal, and that is what you would expect, but the big media companies have convinced the politicians to pass laws that prohibit this.

SkyDigital

[Bizzeh]

Sky have a method that CAN be broke, but, they thought of that. to watch encrypted content (stuff you need to pay for to watch), your sky box requires a phoneline, where sky send new encryption codes every 3 mins, which your box uses to decode the info being sent to it via the satalite.

so, when you break the encryption, and flash a homebrew sky card with the codes, they expire after a few mins anyway, and you need to do this all over again.