Commercial Flights Are Experiencing ‘Unthinkable’ GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do::New “spoofing” attacks resulting in total navigation failure have been occurring above the Middle East for months, which is “highly significant” for airline safety.
Fucking serves them right, the aviation industry have been buying GPS devices for decades that bleed outside and don’t explicitly filter down to their spectrum. There was a satellite internet startup in the US that went through the whole process, bought its spectrum and was ready to launch, then the aviation industry complained and had them shut down because their devices were all shit and “it would be too difficult to change everyone’s equipment”.
Do you have something I can read about this? It’s a little vague, so hard for me to search, and it sounds like something I would be interested in. Thanks
Pretty sure this is the story, rings true to my memory of the company name starting with “L”: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/04/lightsquared-broadband-a-threat-to-gps/
Although this article doesn’t cover how the GPS systems used cheap filtering circuits that didn’t adequately filter out adjacent frequencies. This was done purely to save money, because there wasn’t anything using the adjacent frequencies. As a result, LightSquared went bankrupt in 2012.
Thanks I’ll give it a read.
Edited my last comment, I don’t think that article goes into much detail. It only really covers the objections by GPS device manufacturers against LightSquared, not the technical aspect ie poor filtering by cheap GPS devices.
This article covers LightSquared’s claims of poor filtering by GPS devices: https://www.networkworld.com/article/696602/wireless-lightsquared-says-gps-makers-ignored-filtering-rules.html
This article also covers some of it: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/lightsquared-blew-it-and-heres-why/
TL;DR GPS devices cut corners, however because they were established and so endemic across the industry, there was no practical way to fix them all and LightSquared was sent down the toilet.
What about GLONASS, Galilleo, or BDS? Are they all being equally jammed? Why wouldn’t they sync with all of them and use a consensus to determine accuracy? Like having multiple ntp servers.
The latest generations of gnss receivers have spoofing and jamming mitigation and detection features included with the chip, and multi-band rx technology to sync to more constellations simultaneously and do exactly what you’re talking about. Before then, the spoofing/jamming detection would likely need a software implementation after the receiver. There are different types of spoofing/jamming, all of which are detected and mitigated in different ways.
I don’t know the commercial aircraft industry standards for updating technology, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most commercial aircraft don’t have what you’re talking about.
I generally don’t believe in an isolationist American policy except for Israel. They always drag us into stupid shit like this.
That just means you can’t use autoland in low visibility conditions. Modern IRUs (inertial reference unit) are highly accurate laser gyros that can use GPS for correction, but will throw out the data if it doesn’t make sense. Navigation won’t be affected much, and autoland (if used) will still rely on VHF guidance.
Ignore my ignorance. Are you saying the aircrafts track where they are going by calculating their position from gyroscope data? And this is more precise than GPS?
That’s like using the accelaration sensors in your phone to navigate. Or sailing with compass and nautical maps.
Possible. Tech isn’t even that novel. But still impressive.
Yes. Most of commercial navigation systems rely on the IRUs as a primary source of position data, and they’ll usually have 3 of them. VHF is used by the crew to confirm that the aircraft is on track by referencing VOR stations, though these are slowly being phased out due to GPS.
That being said, a single traditional IRU can have up to 2km of drift over a 2 hr flight (at which point it’s removed from service and replaced). When used in combination with two other IRUs, the error is dramatically reduced. Traditional IRUs are gyroscopically mechanical in nature and do not talk to GPS.
Now, that being said, the new standard is called an ADIRU (ADvanced IRU), which ties in with GPS and features laser gyros. They’re extremely accurate and have essentially zero drift, plus multiple redundant components within each unit.
But the article mentioned that “the spoofing corrupts the Inertial Reference System”. How?
If it’s a smaller plane (such as a CRJ / ERJ) with only one IRU, it will not be able to determine if GPS is valid or not, so the drift correction gets spoiled.
Large commercial aircraft are using 3 IRUs, with newer aircraft using ADIRUs. If GPS does not agree with the three IRUs, the GPS data is thrown out. If the GPS is within tolerance, correction is applied. You could build up very small errors over a long distance, but you should still be pretty close to the airfield when you get there.
How do IRUs work do to give you location?
Do none of the systems, GPS, glonass etc. use encryption or authentication of any form?
Yes Galileo supports encryption. But as far as I know it’s not in use. Has been trialled only. But I know all Airbus aircraft only support GPS satellites and nothing else (yet). I assume Boeing, being American would be the same then.
As far as solutions go, an aircraft can navigate fine without GPS. It can update its position from ground navigation aids and if they are not available it can still Dead Reckon very well. The navigation error very slowly grows until it’s out of the black spot and can use GPS or navigation aid to increase its accuracy. But this navigation error on the time frame of say an hour is a matter of kilometers at most, not dozens.
We need a backup for GPS. LORAN should never have been shut down.
There are 3 of them. Galileo, Glonass and Beidou
