“A small team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin recently tricked a 213-foot superyacht off its course using a custom-made GPS device, rendering the $80 million vessel’s electronic maps and charts useless.
“People have come to trust their electronic chart displays,” Todd Humphreys, team leader and assistant professor at UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering, tells NBC News. These electronic chart displays get their information from civilian GPS signals — which are not encrypted. “The signals have a detailed structure, but they don’t have defenses against counterfeiting ” Humphreys says. As a result, he explains, “the concept of GPS spoofing has been known for maybe 20 years.”
A small team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin recently tricked a 213-foot superyacht off its course using a custom-made GPS device, rendering the $80 million vessel’s electronic maps and charts useless.”
Continue reading the NBC News article.
