Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!

[rebel heart]

False GPS signals allow Texas university students to take control of ship | News.com.au

A group of University of Texas students has demonstrated how easy such electronic "spoofing" is by taking control of an $80m yacht with permission, of course.

Professor Todd Humpreys from the department of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics led the team which created a false GPS signal generator which was able to override the ships navigation computers as it travelled from Monaco to Rhodes in the Mediterranean.

[John A]

Keep track of your position on a paper chart. And, maybe, look where you're going.

[Andrew B.]

The report I heard just last week on the radio news stated that they had the $20 million yacht going anywhere they wanted it to for over a hundred miles without anyone on the yacht ever knowing they were being taken off course. I did a little research earlier today, and found a article posted by Homeland Security from 2003, so they know about it. One has to wonder if is being remedied ?
Apparently the military side of the GPS satellites is encrypted, and they haven't spoofed it, at least not yet.

Spoofed the yacht with a laptop, and $3000 of gear if I recall correctly.

here, http://www.ne.anl.gov/capabilities/vat/spoof.html
then scroll down to GPS Spoofing Countermeasures, under Related Docs.

[nimblemotors]

So the drones don't use the military GPS units?

I would expect it to be pretty easy to find the location of a fake GPS transmitter,
it must keep transmitting to be effective. The penalty for such fake transmissions might be severe, like having to live in NZ.

[Therapy]

"We've got to put on our thinking caps and see what we can do to solve this threat quickly," Professor Humpreys said.

Of course we couldn't have a swift trial followed by a hanging. (not this one done with permission of course) Not in today's PC climate anyway.

[brankin]

Now this will give "Wreckers" a new business model

[nimblemotors]

can give you an excuse in court..the GPS was faked, that is why my missle went to the wrong address, or my boat ran into yours, or my car crashed into the supermarket, or my boat went to NZ.

[Cheechako]

another vote for not tying your Ap to anything else.....

[Captain Bill]

There's nothing new here. It's been well known for a long time that GPS signals can be spoofed. Since the frequencies are line of site only the spoofer has to be fairly close. The military can spoof you too. I used to keep my boat near Oriental NC. One day while still tied to the dock in beautiful downtown Whortonsville, my GPS suddenly put me up in the Bay River, about 10 miles from my actual position. I heard an airplane going over at the time and looked up and saw a marine corp EA-6b electronics warfare aircraft heading for Cherry Pt. MCAS. When it went over the horizon my boat returned to the dock. I guess it's good I wasn't in track mode on my autopilot.

[Adventurebound]

Now I know how my wife has been able to control me all these years.

[Adodero]

You are more likely to have a problem from not being able to acquire the necessary number of satellites than this happening.

On a similar note, do marine GPS units not provide RAIM?

[John A]

What's RAIM??

[jgbrown]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

another vote for not tying your Ap to anything else.....

It needs gps and heading data from a compass to move the rudder to maintain direction of travel I'm pretty sure.

[John A]

Originally Posted by jgbrown

It needs gps and heading data from a compass to move the rudder to maintain direction of travel I'm pretty sure.

An autopilot can steer to a compass direction manually entered in the AP's control unit

You can even manually alter the compass course to steer a different direction from the compass direction you entered.

You can even turn the AP off and manually steer to the course indicated on the gps.

You can even turn both the gps and the AP units off and steer to the wind.

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by jgbrown

It needs gps and heading data from a compass to move the rudder to maintain direction of travel I'm pretty sure.

My windvane steers to the wind and my autopilot just steers to a compass heading, via a magnetic compass sensor.

I think the odds of someone screwing with GPS is pretty slim but if there are guys shining lasers into airplane cockpits I could see GPS hacking not being too far from reality.