
Russians seek answers to central Moscow GPS anomaly - goadly
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-seek-answers-central-moscow-gps-anomaly-091145932.html
======
sashk
You might want to read an article [1] (automatically translate from Russian)
explaining what is possibly going on.

[1][[https://translate.yandex.ru/translate?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftjou...](https://translate.yandex.ru/translate?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftjournal.ru%2F35996-pochemu-
kreml-vo-vnukove-grigorii-bakunov-o-moskovskoi-bede-gps&lang=ru-en)]

------
woodruffw
Reminds me of China's use of GCJ-02 instead of WGS-84 (the international
standard for geodetics). GCJ-02 intentionally obfuscates coordinates to a
random degree, for "national security" purposes. [1]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China#GCJ-02)

------
exhilaration
People might be surprised by this but GPS jammers are widely available, here's
an article about a truck driver in New Jersey who got caught with one 3 years
ago:

[http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/man_fined_32000_for...](http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/man_fined_32000_for_blocking_newark_airport_tracking_system.html)

So it's not like the Kremlin has started using some highly sophisticated
countermeasures, I bet you can order GPS jammers from Alibaba.

~~~
ballooney
If, as suggested by the article, it's acrively telling you you're somewhere
else, that's an order of magnitude more sophisticated than the alibaba jammers
which truckers use to just stop their trackers.

~~~
_wmd
This might be accomplished by something no more sophisticated than a repeater,
they're cheap and readily available to provide GPS location inside buildings.
Simply stick an antenna on the roof and the indoor transmitters will cause
indoor devices to resolve the location of the roof antenna.

I wonder if the same principle could be used to pipe an authentic signal a few
miles then amplify it sufficiently to be preferred by nearby devices

------
jakobdabo
They are spoofing Moscow airports coordinates, which suggests it's an anti-
drone measure (usually drones have no-fly zones pre-installed in the
firmware).

~~~
kuschku
The most interesting takeaway is that the US government managed to get their
governmental buildings added as no-fly zones to the drones, but the Russian
government couldn’t get their no-fly zones added.

~~~
HillRat
Or, knowing the Russian penchant for secrecy surrounding the locations of
government buildings and installations, they may have decided to not even try.
Kind of like the way that plat maps for Soviet cities were intentionally
obfuscated so as to confuse intelligence agencies (and local drivers).

~~~
kuschku
The location of buildings in moscow is pretty well-known, though. But there
have been also discussions in other countries about trying to get governmental
buildings added to the no-fly list for drones, and having issues with that, so
it might actually be the reason.

------
mabbo
Seems like a case where everyone pretty clearly knows what the problem is, and
who is causing it.

------
kylehotchkiss
Doesn't Russia have their own GPS system as well? (GLONASS)

~~~
ttul
They're not worried about drones running off of GLONASS...

