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Russia Suspected In GPS-Spoofing Attacks On Ships (wired.co.uk)
How did a 37-ton tanker suddenly vanish from GPS off the coast of Russia? AmiMoJo shares a report from Wired:
The ship's systems located it 25 to 30 miles away -- at Gelendzhik airport... The Atria wasn't the only ship affected by the problem... At the time, Atria's AIS system showed around 20 to 25 large boats were also marooned at Gelendzhik airport. Worried about the situation, captain Le Meur radioed the ships. The responses all confirmed the same thing: something, or someone, was meddling with the their GPS...
After trawling through AIS data from recent years, evidence of spoofing becomes clear. GPS data has placed ships at three different airports and there have been other interesting anomalies. "We would find very large oil tankers who could travel at the maximum speed at 15 knots," said a former director for Marine Transportation Systems at the U.S. Coast Guard. "Their AIS, which is powered by GPS, would be saying they had sped up to 60 to 65 knots for an hour and then suddenly stopped. They had done that several times"...
"It looks like a sophisticated attack, by somebody who knew what they were doing and were just testing the system..." says Lukasz Bonenberg from the University of Nottingham's Geospatial Institute. "You basically need to have atomic level clocks."
The U.S. Maritime Administration confirms 20 ships have been affected -- all traveling in the Black Sea -- though a U.S. Coast Guard representative "refused to comment on the incident, saying any GPS disruption that warranted further investigation would be passed onto the Department of Defence." But the captain of the 37-ton tanker already has his own suspicions. "It looks like the Russians define an area where they don't want the GPS to apply."
After trawling through AIS data from recent years, evidence of spoofing becomes clear. GPS data has placed ships at three different airports and there have been other interesting anomalies. "We would find very large oil tankers who could travel at the maximum speed at 15 knots," said a former director for Marine Transportation Systems at the U.S. Coast Guard. "Their AIS, which is powered by GPS, would be saying they had sped up to 60 to 65 knots for an hour and then suddenly stopped. They had done that several times"...
"It looks like a sophisticated attack, by somebody who knew what they were doing and were just testing the system..." says Lukasz Bonenberg from the University of Nottingham's Geospatial Institute. "You basically need to have atomic level clocks."
The U.S. Maritime Administration confirms 20 ships have been affected -- all traveling in the Black Sea -- though a U.S. Coast Guard representative "refused to comment on the incident, saying any GPS disruption that warranted further investigation would be passed onto the Department of Defence." But the captain of the 37-ton tanker already has his own suspicions. "It looks like the Russians define an area where they don't want the GPS to apply."
It's all fun and games until a ship runs aground or collides with something, and an eye gets poked out
The US military already encrypts GPS for themselves - it can still be jammed, but it can't be spoofed.
Maybe it's time encryption was applied to civilian GPS as well. It's not like consumer electronics don't have the capability to handle the decryption, and it's not like you'd have to use the same keys as military GPS.
The GPS protocol itself has noise built in to reduce precision for non-military applications. So testing this kind of thing doesn't seem too strange.
Nice proofreading. That's not even a big truck. The article says 37000 ton
they're pulling these asymmetric strategies out of desperation. good god, it's like sharing the open Internet with every single shithead from Counter-Strike. they somehow think they aren't being obvious, too.
guaranteed there will be the usual drumline of idiots in this very thread to say "where is proof huh? cyka blyat" and a few to bitch about the NSA with some saved up mod points on another few accounts to amplify. maybe we'll even see somebody freak out and post the usual DNC talking points straight from RT for some reason.
These attacks have been known for a while, and are not hard at all. All you need is a radio that is stronger than the GPS signal. It's been demonstrated multiple times at DEFCON, and there are youtube videos that show you how to do it with a hackrf radio (for example, if you want to move to a particular place while playing Pokemon Go).
Wikipedia suggests that Russia spoofs GPS whenever Putin is in the area.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What is really happening, is that bad actors are trying to find ways to spoof the real position of ships that are going to North Korea by faking "screwed up GPS" or whatever.
It is not hard to spoof or screw with GPS, it's not an encrypted system. Throw enough noise on the 1.2Ghz to 1.6Hhz frequencies and it will disappear.
There are other "maybe"'s but it seems to me that if someone wanted to "hijack" an airline or a ship, his would be a way to screw with the autopilot.
Just search "rubidium frequency standard" on ebay. Add a picDIV from LeapSecond dot com and an Arduino and presto an *actual* atomic clock. Add some GPS spoofing code used to cheat Pokemon Go, your favorite SDR and an L-band RF amp (ebay) and wow, that's a really high barrier to entry. Certainly, only a world superpower could manage such a feat.
or maybe there's a bug in the AIS software
Nullius in verba
About a year ago, this same thing was reported on land as well in Russia
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
No need for a new, encrypted GPS. The Razor IMU ($50 @ SparkFun) could fix this problem. Or we could just keep living in a world where DIY drones have better navigation systems than the world's largest ships.
I thought all the satellites were too old to receive anything from earth, let alone from puny handheld units like as early smartphones were. Maybe that's why it's not called Wireless magazine?
Since there is an airport very close to the location where this happened, maybe they were having problems with a a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudolite>pseudolite. These devices mimic the transmission of a GPS satellite, and they are sometimes used to increase GPS reliability in critical regions. If they are malfunctioning or improperly set, nearby GPS receivers start having troubles. Before invoking a USSR conspiracy, I would check if these devices have been installed or are under test in the region.
If every single time we peek around the corner, we catch the bear with its paw in the cookie jar, then the narrative doesn't need much shifting.
"It's a witch-hunt I tell ya!" cries the procession of witches.
To me it sounds like a system for confusing cruise missiles, making them drop out of the sky far from target.
Are we spoofing GPS here, or are we spoofing AIS? Just so we're clear... GPS is obviously GPS, but the summary seems to conflate GPS and AIS. AIS is a terrestrial based VHF system which takes GPS data from individual ships adds identifiers and transmits it to anyone who cares to listen, which usually means other ships and shore-side receivers. It sounds to me like it is AIS that is being spoofed -- which would be trivial compared to GPS.
Keep in mind that AIS is just one of several redundant systems which ships use to navigate waterways and track positions of nearby vessels.
No investigation has indicated suspicions that Russia did anything. The only one who suspects Russia is one captain of a tanker ship.
Beware of the Leopard.
that your meaningless rants about the left just make you sound like a douche-bag? Right?
it's cute when the vatnik retards get all uppity and theatrical like this
they think they're doing something novel, or really anything at all aside from throwing data points into a honeypot
tick tock, ivan
haha!
I worked for an aerospace research company in the late 90's. One project we worked on for a "three letter agency" involved adding error to GPS signals received by civilian aircraft. We were eventually able to modify position fixes in the aircraft from the ground by as much as 1km without tripping the GPS fix quality flag in the avionics. anything more than this required a very accurate clock beyond the PLL stabilized clock based off the GPS satellites we were using. This was a significant finding because aircraft were just starting to use GPS for IFR approach purposes. the only way to prevent this is to encrypt the clock stream from the GPS birds.
GPS signals are weak and easy to overpower. The protocol is 100% open and anyone can easily spoof positions with a HackRF and decent amplifier. The old positioning system (which name escapes) me was retired but was again re-activated for reasons exactly like this.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Mod parent up!
If you want an overview of the degradation of the Russian government, I suggest this book: The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, by Steven Lee Myers (2015)
For those who want an overview of the degradation of the U.S. government, can you recommend a book?
Or near their military installations and bases, use GLOSNASS or go old-school, with programmable electronic computing devices.
Interesting theory. Link: Pseudolite Quote: Pseudolite is a contraction of the term "pseudo-satellite", used to refer to something that is not a satellite which performs a function commonly in the domain of satellites.
Why pseudolites are used: Pseudolites preserve position information during GPS-denied conditions (June 2, 2016)
More info about the development of radio frequency position information:
Opening Up Indoors: Japan's Indoor Messaging System, IMES (May 1, 2011)
There are, of course, problems:
Danger, Will Robinson! Beware the IMES of Japan (Oct. 8, 2014)
GLOSNASS is a Russian GPS system. (Aug. 25, 2016)
https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2017/19867/gps-spoofing-preps-worldwide-sabotage/
You can also look up the Altria and find its true size. (in the photo section).
It sounds like they are mixing up 2 different things, the "review" of the logs that speed them up and then stopped them for an hour sounds like a time based issue not a location based issue perhaps related to crossing between 2 of the 6? time zones in Russia, resulting in the systems clock auto adjusting to the time in the new zone. So the hour it was stationary for, were there 1 hours worth of log GPS log entries? so the resulting logs would have looked like 2 hours worth of log entries for a 1 hour time period, then 0-1 log entries for the next hour.
Why is this the Russian state's fault exactly?
Because "RUSSIAN HACKERS" has been branded into media-consumer-drones' "brains"?
Do NOT let the lefties tell you otherwise! MAGA!
Follow the money! Who profits more from "Russian misdeeds"? Leftists or Russia? BAMN!
Now watch as I use it to steal nuclear warheads mwahahahahaa!!!
What does this even mean? It seem to indicate that the poster thinks GPS is some sort of tracking system.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
In Soviet Russia GPS spoofs you!
I mention this in tribute to our favorite russkiy komik, a funny guy from the Cold War. It occurs to me, there must have been some expat Americans over in the USSR doing the comedy circuit. Is anyone aware of anyone?
wikipedia: His humor combined a mockery of life under Communism and of consumerism in the United States, as well as word play caused by misunderstanding of American phrases and culture, all punctuated by the catchphrase, "And I thought, 'What a country!'"
What a country.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
We can't have a single day without a MUH EVIIIIIIL RUSSIANS story from EditorDavid. Hey David, do you work for DNS? Are you getting all this shit from Podesta or something?
Keep on killing /.!
(It's only Monday, but I've already met my internet pedantry quota for the week.)
Russia's globalnaya navigatsionnaya sputnikovaya sistema? Was that spoofed too?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You're an annoying dullard. Go back to Facebook.
Until recently there was a backup/alternative to the Satnav systems. Google the penny wise, pound foolish story of LORAN-C and E-LORAN.
An in-place, functioning alterenative/complement to GPS that was robust and hard to jam. The LORAN system was thrown away by beancounters and politicians who couldn't comprehend the value of backups for life-critical systems
Senator McCarthy, so nice to see you again.
Excellent post, Comrade Li Feng!
Anyone else notice a pattern? It seems that when the signals are spoofed the reported location is at an airport. Why would that be?
Is this to protect the airport? For example, a GPS guided bomb dropped on the airport would think it is on target when in fact it is 30 miles out from shore. Is it to protect other targets? They'd be willing to go sacrificing the airport (presumably a low occupancy area with few buildings, most of the area being runways and such) instead of a higher value target.
Maybe it's just that an airport is a convenient place to hide the equipment and the device is re-transmitting it's own location to get around the problems of having to decode and re-encode the GPS signals.
Maybe I'm seeing a pattern that isn't there.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If this was actually issued by the US Coast Guard, I'm pretty sure they would have spelt Defense in the common American form.
Well, it didn't, because you can only receive GPS. Unless you are a satellite, you are not on GPS, so you can not vanish from it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What if every time we peek around the corner, we see someone yelling about the bear with its paw in the cookie jar, but we never see the bear or the jar or the details on which cookies are missing?
Last week, I put together a quick write-up of the possible sources of trouble for AIS messages. It doesn't go into the needed depth on topics, but I would appreciate technical feedback and any links to people doing deep dives on any or all of the issues.
GPS spoofing possibly seen in AIS data: http://schwehr.blogspot.com/20...
And before that I've written quite a bit on the insanity that is AIS:
AIS Integrity and Security - Part 0: http://schwehr.blogspot.com/20...
Allegedly, to down civilian drones. To prevent the usage in vicinity of airports, airfield and aerodromes, civilian drone manufacturers provide their drones with software and a copy of a navigational database which lists all such no-fly zones. When a drone is made to think it is in one of these zones, its software enforces an immediate emergency landing.
That's what I heard of it; don't know how much truth in it. Sounds plausible.
As Russia's GPS alternative takes off, it becomes more enticing for them to meddle with vessels which remain reliant on the US's older system.
Hopefully competent government folks pause their spying on US citizens momentarily to get a handle on the situation and flesh out the appropriate contingency plans.
Since all the prominent jobs and property ownership in the US remains confined to baby boomers too lazy to open PDF attachments, perhaps the best plan would be to learn Russian...
Not the same thing, but my phone tags pictures in Norway (I am in North America) when certain WiFi networks are in range, regardless of what the GPS is telling it. (The WiFi in question has a satellite link to Norway, it is on a vessel from Norway.) For some reason, that WiFi location data is weighted higher than the GPS.
At least you know you can blame the Russians/reds/commies for that, too!
If you are spoofing the processing gain from the spreading code will apply to you too so that cancels. The marine GPS antennas are about 10dbi straight up and 0dbi at the horizon. They are tuned to be as close to a half sphere as possible because you get mist if your horizontal position accuracy from the satellites on the horizon so you need to hear those. So 26w plus 13dbi antenna minus 182 path loss is -155db at the ship antenna. Since you are really trying to spoof the horizon birds anyway the antenna gain cancels. Plus 142 path loss for 200miles gets you to -13dbw which us how loud you would have to be to match GPS. So 1w with a 0dbi antenna puts you 13db louder than GPS. That is doable.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.