Spotlight

InsideGNSS: GNSS Vulnerability: Present Dangers and Future Threats, February 2012

“This free one-day event at the British National Physical Laboratory in Teddington (London) on Wednesday, February 22 will present results of current jamming detection, and consider emerging threats such as meaconing and spoofing.The seminar runs from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Interested participants must pre-register online.

Todd Humphreys, director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas-Austin will deliver the keynote, “PVT security: privacy and trustworthiness.”

Continue reading the InsideGNSS article.

The Engineer: Could Defense Sector Help Avert GPS Disaster, February 2012

“Ships colliding at sea, stock markets crashing, transport networks in chaos: these are some of the nightmare scenarios that researchers studying GPS-jamming techniques this week warned we could be facing if suitable countermeasures aren’t produced. The newspapers gave substantial coverage on Wednesday to a conference at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in west London, which highlighted the dangers society is facing as we become increasingly dependent on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) like America’s GPS and the forthcoming European Galileo.

The problem is that GNSS satellite transmissions, which are used not just for navigation but also to provide time stamps for transactions at the stock market and to alert trains when to stop at specific stations, can easily be jammed or falsified (spoofed) with fake signals.”

Continue reading The Engineer article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys.

Fox News: GPS at Risk from Terrorists, Rogue Nations, and $50 Jammers, Expert Warns, February 2012

“The Global Positioning System guides our ships at sea. It’s the centerpiece of the new next-gen air traffic control system. It even timestamps the millions of financial transactions made across the world each and every day. And it’s at extreme risk from criminals, terrorist organizations and rogue states—and even someone with a rudimentary GPS jammer that can be bought on the Internet for 50 bucks, said Todd Humphreys, an expert on GPS with the University of Texas.

“If you’re a rogue nation, or a terrorist network and you’d like to cause some large scale damage—perhaps not an explosion but more an economic attack against the United States—this is the kind of area that you might see as a soft spot,” he told Fox News.”

Continue reading the Fox News article, which includes a nationally-televised interview with Dr. Humphreys.

WIRED: GPS ‘Spoofers’ Could Be Used for High-Frequency Financial Trading Fraud, February 2012

“GPS “spoofers”—devices that create false GPS signals to fool receivers into thinking that they are at a different location or different time—could be used to defraud financial institutions, according to Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas. On an innocuous level, GPS spoofing can lead to the confusing of in-car GPS systems so that users think they are in a different location to their actual location. However, a more sinister use could be to interfere with the time-stamping systems used in high frequency trading.”

Continue reading the Wired article.

Reuters: GPS Attacks Risk Maritime Disaster, Trading Chaos, February 2012

“Satelite navigation systems are at risk from criminals, terrorists or even just bored teenagers, with the potential to cause major incidents from maritime disasters to chaos in financial markets, leading experts warned on Wednesday. From maps on car dashboards and mobile phones, to road tolls, aviation and marine navigation systems and even financial exchanges, much of modern life relies on Global Navigation Satelite Systems (GNSS) that use satelite signals to find a location or keep exact time.”

Continue reading the Reuters article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys on GPS spoofing.

The article has also been published by DailyMailYahoo! FinanceMSNThe Baltimore SunCNBCInternational Business Times, and Chicago Tribune.

GPS World: Straight Talk on Anti-Spoofing: Securing the Future of PNT, January 2012

Austin, TX — Kyle Wesson, Daniel Shepard, and Todd Humphreys authored the cover story of GPS World on anti-spoofing techniques for civil GPS in the January 2012 edition.

The introduction reads, “Disruption created by intentional generation of fake GPS signals could have serious economic consequences. This article discusses how typical civil GPS receivers respond to an advanced civil GPS spoofing attack, and four techniques to counter such attacks: spread-spectrum security codes, navigation message authentication, dual-receiver correlation of military signals, and vestigial signal defense. Unfortunately, any kind of anti-spoofing, however necessary, is a tough sell.”

The story is online in flash or pdf format.

WIRED: Iran’s Alleged Drone Hack: Tough, but Possible, December 2011

“Take everything that Iran says about its captured U.S. drone with a grain of salt. But its new claim that it spoofed the drone’s navigational controls isn’t implausible. Although it’s way harder to do than the Iranian boast suggests, it points to yet another flaw with America’s fleet of robot warplanes.”

Continue reading the WIRED article, which features an interview with Dr. Humphreys on GPS spoofing.

Zaher Kassas Elevated to IEEE Senior Member, December 2011

Austin, TX — The Radionavigation Laboratory congratulates Zaher (Zak) Kassas for being elevated to IEEE Senior Member in 2011. To be eligible for IEEE Senior Member status, an IEEE Member must:

  • have experience reflecting professional maturity;
  • have been in professional practice for at least ten years; and
  • show significant performance over a period of at least five of their years in professional practice.

Zak Kassas is co-advised by Dr. Ari Araposthathis and Dr. Todd Humphreys.

Dr. Humphreys Gives Invited Enrichment Lecture at MIT, December 2011

Boston, MA — MIT Professor Dr. Kerri Cahoy, an expert in radio occultation, invited Dr. Todd Humphreys to present on development of the FOTON GPS radio occultation receiver. The presentation was an Invited Enrichment Lecture for her graduate-level Satellite Engineering class and other students and faculty of the MIT AeroAstro department.

Coincident with Dr. Humphreys’s visit, students Ingrid Beerer, Clayton Crail, Jason Herrera, Robert Legge, Whitney Lohmeyer, and Annie Marinan from Dr. Cahoy’s Satellite Engineering course presented the final report of their semester-long feasibility study for the GeoScan Project. The students gave an excellent overview of all the sensors that they hope to pack into the hosted payload bay of the 66 IridiumNext satellites, which will begin to be launched in 2015. A GPS-based occultation sensor is one of the primary system sensor instruments proposed for GeoScan. Lars Dyrud, who has been the primary organizer of GeoScan project, was in attendance. Program directors from NSF attended the students’ presentation virtually.