How Vulnerable Is G.P.S.? - The New Yorker
Dana A. Goward, FRIN
President, Resilient Navigation & Timing Foundation; Proprietor, Maritime Governance, LLC
Image: Shutterstock
Blog Editor's Note: A great article by Greg Milner, author of "Pinpoint - How GPS is changing technology, culture, and our minds." Long time RNTF members will recall that Greg spoke at our 2016 annual meeting at the US Naval Observatory just after his book was released. Congressman Garamendi also spoke.
While there might not be a lot of new material in this article for many of our readers it is a good recap. It is also good to see the issue getting space in the popular media.
And it is great press for our friend Todd Humphreys!
How Vulnerable Is G.P.S.?
An engineering professor has proved—and exploited—its vulnerabilities.
By Greg Milner
August 6, 2020
The proliferation of G.P.S. interference is a major reckoning for the country’s military and defense systems.
In the cool, dark hours after midnight on June 20, 2012, Todd Humphreys made the final preparations for his attack on the Global Positioning System. He stood alone in the middle of White Sands Missile Range, in southern New Mexico, sixty miles north of Juárez. All around him were the glowing gypsum dunes of the Chihuahuan Desert. In the distance, the snow-capped San Andres Mountains loomed.
On a hill about a kilometre away, his team was gathered around a flat metal box the size of a carry-on suitcase. The electronic machinery inside the box was called a spoofer—a weapon by another name. Soon, a Hornet Mini, a drone-operated helicopter popular with law-enforcement and rescue agencies, was scheduled to appear forty feet above them. Then the spoofer would be put to the test.
Founder & CEO
4 年the type of vulnerable case are common for all GNSS system
Humanist & Solutionprovider for Mission Critical PNT, IoT and 5G Telecom Ctrl Cmd and Trusted Precise Wireless Timing, TPWiT.
4 年Solution have been crystal-clear for many many years, and in year 2006 it was put into one of the very best recommendations ever : "From a security standpoint, the best defense against an attack on GPS is to lower the target value by providing a sufficiently robust national backup that allows PNT?[Positioning Navigation & Timing] to continue in a way that there is a significantly reduced safety risk and direct impact on our economy [,security & safety].?" ? https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/loran/geninfo/GPS_Backup_For_PNT_Aug_2006.pdf? In Norway too, people are too fond of the big money that really is a showstopper to maintain what we've known for several decades. Some individual people that lives a posh life from their orbital income, refuse to look at affordable and well-proven solutions, they have even contributed heavily to the destruction of such not too many years ago, by promising too much too soon. It's like the well known story about the hunter and the hide. The hunter has become too fat and posh to hunt, and the bear is nowhere to be seen. Tech-people in a very large nation next to Norway laugh their Alfa-double-Sierra off when looking at how we are digging our own trap, and even manage to get trapped inside .