Spotlight

February 2025: IEEE Spectrum spoke with the RNL’s Dr. Todd Humphreys about spoofing and its effect on civilian aircraft. When asked about examples of GPS spoofing, Dr. Humphreys responded that “in 2017, we began to see spoofing attacks happening in the Black Sea” and that since spoofing has become “more sophisticated and more widespread.” He talks about how spoofing is provably not detectable under certain circumstances and that there are steps aircraft can take to mitigate. For more details, visit the article here.

November 2024: Some newer companies are exploring direct space-to-phone communication. These include SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile. “Sat phones have long been the gold standard for those needing connectivity in remote conditions. They are expensive to use, with rates normally running to dollars per minute. But they provide coverage in the middle of the ocean, up in the air or deep in the woods. Midland, Texas-based AST is promising to turn any ordinary cellphone, like the one in your pocket right now, into a satellite phone. They aim to do that by connecting it directly to a network of specially designed satellites parked in low-Earth orbit.”

The RNL’s Dr. Humphreys claims that the key behind using an unmodified phone for the process it to pretend that the satellite is a base station that pre-compensates for extra delays and Doppler. The main challenges are power, velocity, and delay. AST space mobile solves power by using a large antenna, according to Dr. Humphreys. For more details on the story, visit the Investor’s Business Daily article here.

November 2024: The Hudson Institute held an event with a panel discussion titled “Navigating GPS Vulnerabilities: Implications for US Economic and National Security.” During this panel, the RNL’s Dr. Humphreys gave a presentation on “Civil PNT Caught in the Crossfire.” For a transcript of the panel, visit their website here, and for a video of his presentation, visit the uploaded video here.

October 2024: Dr. Humphreys attended the Brooklyn 6G Summit and gave a presentation on Day 2 titled “Bracing for Interference: Electronic Warfare and its Spillover Effects.” For a video of the presentation visit IEEE’s stream here, where Dr. Humphreys presentation starts around 4:19:00.

October 2024: The RNL’s Dr. Humphreys spoke at the Department of Transportation’s annual Civil GPS Service Interface Committee meeting on America’s susceptibility to GPS jamming and spoofing from space. Specifically, he says “there is every reason to believe China’s BeiDou global navigation satellite system has the ability to imitate American GPS signals and those of Europe’s Galileo.” According to SpaceNews, “unlike many of its adversaries, the United States has made few preparations for such attacks on its homeland and infrastructure, despite mishaps at home that have disrupted air traffic control systems and regular press reports of American weapons systems degraded by jamming and spoofing overseas.”

“While Russia’s GLONASS satnav system is much older and less capable than China’s, the Putin regime seems to be pursuing its own course for being able to deliver knockout blows to GPS, as Moscow threatened it would do in November 2021 if NATO crossed its red line and interfered with the invasion of Ukraine.” For more details on the story, visit the SpaceNews article here.

September 2024: “Since the start of the Gaza war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been deploying a tactic known as GPS “spoofing”, designed to fool enemy missiles and rockets that rely on the global positioning system technology to aim at their target” reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Their GPS spoofing has also affected civilians through disrupting “civil infrastructure, commercial aircraft and even dating and food delivery apps.”

Their GPS spoofing causes devices in the area to resolve as being located “[o]n the tarmac of Beirut’s international airport” or an industrial estate in Cairo, Egypt. The RNL’s Dr. Humphreys says these locations are “fairly arbitrary.” Research at the RNL has determined the location of at least one of the spoofing transmitters to be in the Ein Shemer Airfield in northern Israel.

One major disruption is for aviation. Dr. Humphreys “says because of the frequency, pilots have become accustomed to this and sometimes shut off the alarms or the GPS system, which is dangerous, despite there being no accidents so far” according to the ABC. “In July, Lebanon filed a complaint to the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) over the GPS spoofing, which also affects aircraft transiting the Mediterranean.”

The ABC reports that “it’s not clear if this practice is considered legal or not as the International Telecommunications Union ‘has spoken out both sides of its mouth'”, according too Dr. Humphreys. He says “[o]n the one hand, [the ITU] says, ‘Thou shalt not transmit any signals in the GNSS bands. These are sacred bands, bands reserved for aviation, for safety of life.’ But in a different portion of the … constitution, they basically give carte blanche to countries over security threats.” This would allow any country to disrupt GPS, even beyond its borders and for civilians, if they claim it is for security reasons.

September 2024: As GPS jamming and spoofing continue, pilots, airlines, and officials voice their concerns. The WSJ reports that “[t]he number of flights affected daily has surged from a few dozen in February to more than 1,100 in August,” based on data from SkAI Data Services and Zurich University of Applied Sciences. While officials say spoofing hasn’t posed major safety risks, since pilots are trained to handle situations without GPS by relying on backup systems, it still takes pilots’ attention away in case of other concurrent emergencies.

The RNL’s Dr. Humphreys says “[t]hese pilots are doing double duty in the cockpit,” in response to reports from pilots. He also says “[t]his is embarrassing for the airline industry, for the carriers and for the FAA,” in response to the slow movements from industry and regulators to “harden planes against spoofing.”

While the FAA said it “found no proof of intentional interference” as reported by the WSJ, there have been instances in the US of GPS interference causing issues, like a case in October 2022 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Outside the US, Europe is reporting disruptions due to GPS spoofing but say no flights have been endangered. For more on the story, visit the WSJ here, or the transcript here.

July 2024: As GPS service is threatened by spoofing and jamming, many modern day operations dependent on it are being threatened as well. As reported by the New York Times, in the last year over 60, 000 commercial aircraft have been victims of GPS spoofing. Our dependence on GPS and GNSS in general spans from emergency services like ambulances, communications with cell phones, and many other modern day services. Despite the importance of the service GPS provides us, the U.S. “has no civilian backup system” for it.

According to the article, the U.S. is lagging behind competing GNSS systems by replacing the aging satellites slowly while other countries develop “newer alternatives.” Europe’s Galileo system authenticates its signals. China’s Beidou system has the most satellites, and the country has built land-based infrastructure meant to support their system, but also act as a backup. “A U.S. backup plan was proposed a decade ago but never took off. New American technologies are in development but could take years before they are widely adopted.” For more on this, visit the article here.

The RNL has already found that a major source of spoofing in the Middle East is an Israeli air base with a speculated main purpose of disrupting Hamas rockets, but also affecting commercial flights in the region. According to another New York Times article, “the Israeli military declined to comment” when asked about it. As spoofing becomes more prevalent, some regions are more affected than others, like the Middle East, or the Baltics. For more visit the article here.