
Illegal GPS Jammers Are Widespread, Study Finds - baha_man
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/illegal-gps-jammers-are-widespread-study-finds-62443
======
NelsonMinar
The risk these things pose to aviation is real. There's been a huge shift
towards GPS for instrument flying. Cross country flying frequently relies on
GPS to know where you are. Even more important, flying an approach to land now
often uses GPS to keep the plane to a specific safe path, essential when
flying in a cloud. A plane isn't going to fly out of the sky if GPS suddenly
stops working, but it can make life awfully difficult.

The risk is not just theoretical. For example, in 2009 the Newark airport had
a daily GPS failure that was finally traced to a trucker using a jammer,
presumably to defeat a tracker enforcing safe driving rules.
<http://www.economist.com/node/18304246>

~~~
zbowling
The more sophisticated jammers don't cause "noise", but rather they record and
replay the pseudorandom generated digits they receive from the various
frequencies and time drift them. It's hard to triangulate much of anything
then and it could send you off miles from where you think you are.

Much better than just noise because you wouldn't know there is a problem.

~~~
NelsonMinar
This attack is what Iran says they did to capture the US drone a few months
ago. It's pretty crazy that GPS signals include no cryptographic
authentication, even for military use.

I'm not so worried about this kind of attack on civilian aviation. It would be
a directed attack: potentially deadly but rare and focussed. I'm much more
worried about the casual disruption to GPS from truck drivers spending $99 on
a grey market device.

~~~
zbowling
There is cryptographic hash so that you can't send false data, but replaying
the existing data but time delayed is still possible. The timing is how the
triangulation fix is done. More sources of data, the harder it is to spoof. If
you only have 3 or 4 fixed points, it's easy to spoof. 6 to 10 and it becomes
extremely difficult.

Also military GPS is far more accurate than civilian GPS by a factor of 10x.

~~~
cheald
I'm speaking out of ignorance here, but why couldn't you just use a
quantitized time value (to account for transmission lag) as a part of the data
that's hashed? It works great to prevent replay attacks with OAuth.

~~~
zbowling
nope. it's time that is the factor for triangulation. you always take the
first time you received from the one source and you can discard certainly
something way out side of what you expect. It's how you defeat the concreate
canyon effect in big cities where signals are bouncing off everything.

However if you have a low strength signal from one source and you receive a
frame that is a second or a two off, it can cause you to think you are miles
away from where you think you supposed to be.

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droithomme
I really appreciate the link they provided at the end of where to buy one.

These personal sized units are not really a risk to aviation etc as is being
said, that is just an argument to make the public turn against the freedom
from unwanted surveillance that jammers bring. These work by transmitting
noise at the frequencies that the GPS satellites transmit at so the local
receiver can't tell where it is, which is the same as when it's in a tunnel or
parking garage. The range on these battery operated personal ones is only a
few feet, so no naval ships or airplanes thousands of feet or miles away are
bothered. The ones that bother fishing boats and such are high powered
transmitters designed to block other parties at a distance and have nothing to
do with these small ones people use to stop their boss knowing what they are
doing with the company delivery truck.

~~~
lsc
the problem is that the legitimate GPS signal is ridiculously weak, and
generally speaking, to reliably jam, you need a significantly stronger signal.
(well, and compared to a solar-powered transmitter on a satellite, it's pretty
hard not to have a significantly stronger signal) I'm not a RF guy myself, but
I hang out with a bunch of them. Guaranteeing that your jammer only had a
range of a few feet sounds... difficult.

I personally know people that have had problems with their systems that have
been traced back to truckers with GPS jammers.

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brudgers
Just reading the article rather than relying on other sources, this sounds
like the sort of report used to justify one or more additional government
contracts in the name of "national security".

To put it another way, the only solution is already known - build critical
systems which are not dependent on continuous access to GPS signals. One
cannot prevent jambing of a widespread consumer system - the asymmetry of
costs and knowledge is too far in favor of the jammer in any civilian case
(military solutions to jamming are another matter).

------
keithpeter
I'm UK based and I think we do have a tendency in the UK towards low
redundancy in key systems, mainly to save money.

For example, the London Underground used to have its own small power stations.
These needed refurb/upgrade about 20 years ago, cost £12million, so not done,
bridge to National Grid instead.

No big problems since, because there are several connections, complete failure
would need almost complete black out in London, but unpleasant when it happens
locally

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556910/Power-
failure...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556910/Power-failure-
traps-5-000-Tube-passengers-underground-hours.html)

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4108-double-failure-
ca...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4108-double-failure-caused-
london-power-blackout.html)

Perhaps National UK systems need more duplication and less reliance on central
systems like GPS?

I've seen reports of a plan to use mobile phone based signals on railways to
offset problems with antiquated wiring and cable theft...

<http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.8564>

At present, when there are problems on the local commuter trains, we can fall
back on 'sole possession of the way' although the drivers no longer have the
brass tokens. The driver stops the train, gets out of the cab and resets the
signal, which sets the signal on the next section of track to danger, so no
other train will enter that section until train clears it. Not sure if they
will keep the wiring that allows that in the future.

~~~
arethuza
My favourite example of this is the way the PM would have launched the nuclear
V-bombers towards the Soviet Union in the late 50s and early 60s: using the AA
radio network!

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-
eve...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-event-of-a-
russian-nuclear-attack-call-the-aa-710672.html)

------
Zirro
Reminds me of some thieves who had stolen a great load of valuable electronics
and other items here in Sweden, and put strong jammers in the house where they
stored it.

Instead of hiding their location, this actually gave them away as it had been
disturbing the GPS-coverage in this area. When the source of the jamming was
found, the police was alerted and the thieves arrested.

~~~
K2h
thats profound. you bring up a good point that it will ow be fairly straight
forward to map, find, and correct jammed (or low power) GPS signal.

i have long thought government postal carriers and other government vehicles
should be required to stream realtime road congestion and traffic flow data..
this data could also show jammed or poor reception.

------
jjwiseman
Last month in South Korea a surveillance drone lost GPS, possibly due to
jamming by North Korea, and as a result crashed into its control truck,
killing one engineer and injuring two pilots:

    
    
      Although North Korea was intermittently jamming GPS in the
      border region between 28 April and 15 May it is not known
      if the jammer was operating at the time of the fatal crash.
      The South has reacted angrily to the jamming, which has
      interrupted navigation on more than 600 civilian flights -
      and it has been likened to a form of terrorism by regional
      media.
    
      "All information recovered to date indicates that after a
      loss of GPS signals to the aircraft's receivers incorrect
      handling and omissions over a time period of a number of
      minutes, resulted in an unfortunate chain of events that
      ultimately led to the crash," the statement says.
    

[http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/gps-
los...](http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/gps-loss-kicked-
off-fatal-dron.html)

On a historical note, if this turns out not to have been caused by GPS jamming
and was purely an accident, I think this will be the first case of an
accidental death caused by a drone (not counting people erroneously but
intentionally targeted by drone weapons).

------
smoyer
Should we really be surprised that people don't want to be tracked everywhere
they go? Isn't my location also a matter of privacy? I wonder where you buy
one of these jammers.

~~~
dalke
If you read all the way through, you would had seen the link to a site to buy
one at the end.

~~~
smoyer
I saw the link ... and wouldn't waste my money since my cars don't have
trackers (three are 1971 models that barely have an electric system). What I
meant was that I could understand why people would want one of these devices.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Disabling the tracker in your own car is fine. However, that's not what the
jammers do. They broadcast a signal that blocks GPS for everyone on a wide
radius. To be able to guarantee no lock in a 10m radius means you have to
interfere with GPS for at least half a km around you. It's absolutely _not_
okay to wholesale block service to everyone near you because you want to be
more private.

~~~
smoyer
I'm not condoning this as a technique to remain "private" ... I'm simply
stating that I understand why people are buying jammers and I agree that some
of them should be allowed to have their privacy.

I'm not so sure about others. If you're driving a truck for a shipping
company, I suspect it's their right to know where their equipment is.

~~~
joezydeco
What I don't understand is how a trucking company that has their unit jammed
doesn't eventually figure that out and fire the driver.

[EDIT] The only thing I can think of is that the GPS is always recording, but
only examined in the event of an accident. The driver can claim the unit was
defective and not his fault, so there's no proof he was driving 90 in a 60
zone.

~~~
wmil
It's possible that early units weren't very reliable. If drivers started using
jammers before the reliability improved than the company may just expect a
high rate of failure.

The other option is that insurance companies and regulators want the GPS
trackers installed, but the companies don't care as long as the deliveries get
made.

There are limits on how many hours a driver is allowed to work, for safety
reasons.

------
maxerickson
The linked BBC article:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17119768>

is a little clearer on how widespread the usage is. It estimates that there
may be as few as 50 jamming incidents per day in the UK, or as many as 450.

If a jammer is driving by more than 1 of their stations or driving by a
station 2 times a day, the whole thing could be explained by a few dozen of
them being in use.

------
GiraffeNecktie
How vulnerable are Google's self-driving cars to GPS jamming?

~~~
zitterbewegung
You can still drive the car? Also, google has wifi methods of knowing where
the car is and they still have computer vision. I think what you would want to
do is jam all the frequencies that the google car receives. A better question
is how could you try to make the system drive somewhere that you want to.

~~~
uptown
There's absolutely no way Google is falling-back to the less-specific WiFi
geolocation for self-driving cars.

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drsim
Interesting article, but why the spam?

"buy online at dedicated websites like www.[snip].co.uk, and a basic model
costs just around £60"

Hmm...

~~~
bestes
I thought it was refreshing to see that link, even though I didn't click on
it. Seems more honest and would have saved me the detour through Google to
find it myself.

~~~
drsim
At Google you'd have been given at least an array of options. If the site was
transparent about any commercial interest in the vendor I'd agree with you.

------
joshu
I wonder how hard it would be to build a detector. I coul mount it on my front
porch.

