Slashdot Mirror
College Students Hijack $80 Million Yacht With GPS Signal Spoofing
colinneagle writes "A team of students at the University of Texas at Austin built and successfully tested a custom GPS spoofing device to remotely redirect an $80 million yacht onto a different route. The project was completed with the permission of the yacht's owners in the Mediterranean Sea this past June. Because the yacht's crew relies entirely on GPS signal for direction, the students were able to lead the yacht onto a different course without the knowledge of anyone on-board. The GPS spoofing device essentially over-powered all other GPS signals using until the spoofed signal was the only one that the yacht followed. The team then used the GPS spoofing device to convince the ship's crew to redirect onto a different route voluntarily. By changing the signal on the spoofing device, the students led the crew to believe that the ship was drifting off-course to the left. In response, the crew steered the ship to the right, thinking that it would get the ship back on course, when it actually brought the ship off the course entirely."
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/26/2344215/gps-spoofing-with-3000-worth-of-equipment-and-a-laptop
It may be a dupe, but I distinctly remember reading post after post on that article from apparently knowledgeable people explaining in great detail how this whole "GPS spoofing" thing was supposedly nearly impossible or at least highly impractical. I am very much interested in having someone explain how these people have managed to accomplish something that is supposedly not doable.
Seems to me this represents a valid threat to the safety of using civil GPS navigation systems, on land or at sea. Most of the posts on the previous article seemed to indicate that GPS is NOT threatened at all. I am unable to rectify these two opposing points of view without further input from knowledgeable people.