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Old 28-03-2022, 17:03   #31
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

Spoofing modern GNSS receivers is actually complex and not easily done , jamming them is easy. Military actors have little need for spoofing, telling a tank commander or a yacht skipper he’s suddenly 100 miles away from where he roughly knows he is , is unlikely to work and even automated systems can detect sudden widely different position fixes.
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Old 28-03-2022, 17:06   #32
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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Originally Posted by CarinaPDX View Post
I wonder how this works with a Ublox 8 or 9 receiver. The 8 can be set to receive 3 of the GNSS simultaneously, and the 9 should get all 4 (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo). The receiver chooses the satellites to track that give the best accuracy and keep the others in reserve. A couple of years ago that meant that, after solving for all available satellites, a Neo 8 kept the GPS satellites and ignored the GLONASS (not as accurate); the BeiDou and Galileo systems were still finishing up trials. It is pretty hard to believe that anyone short of a state actor (and even then doubtful) could spoof multiple GNSS simultaneously to fool receivers comparing all results. I wouldn't lose any sleep over that.

Greg
Given today , all four systems are operational , a modern receiver cannot be easily spoofed as you would have create spoofing for all four systems. GPS by the way for historical reasons is now the least accurate of the systems , but newer block satellites are claiming to improve fundamentals
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Old 28-03-2022, 19:14   #33
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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Originally Posted by StoneCrab View Post
With the GPS down, OMG what are we to do?
I understand this comment was made strictly in the context of navigation and potential "spoofing", but if the GNSS systems (specifically GPS) were actually rendered non-operational by whatever cause, there would be many more far-reaching and shall we say ... 'unpleasant' consequences. GPS time signals are used to regulate all sorts of things, such as bank transactions, cell-phone service, radio stations, weather services, utilities such as electricity, etc.

IOW, there would be complete chaos worldwide. Most cruisers would be in a very slightly better position to deal with this than the average person. But I'd wager that a vanishingly small number of people on Earth would not be seriously affected in one way or another.
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Old 28-03-2022, 22:37   #34
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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That depends on the crew paying attention the radar and doing the visual nav.
Very, very true.

I mentioned larger ships as this (methods and position-fixing interval) is the sort of detail that would be required by the SMS and specified in the passage plan, so the officers should have little excuse for not doing it.

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Given today , all four systems are operational , a modern receiver cannot be easily spoofed as you would have create spoofing for all four systems. GPS by the way for historical reasons is now the least accurate of the systems , but newer block satellites are claiming to improve fundamentals
If, as CarinaPDX stated, "The receiver chooses the satellites to track that give the best accuracy and keep the others in reserve", this is not necessarily a defense against spoofing. A spoofed signal that appeared to have better signal strength and lower position error might even be quite appealing to such a receiver, which could then discard the other systems as apparently less-accurate.
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Old 29-03-2022, 01:14   #35
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

The Russians are turning off their AIS at an increased rate. The effort is described as synchronized and heavily present in oil tankers.

https://www.voanews.com/a/russian-ca...-/6505792.html
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Old 29-03-2022, 08:37   #36
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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GPS time signals are used to regulate all sorts of things, such as bank transactions, cell-phone service, radio stations, weather services, utilities such as electricity, etc.
I would like to see the source on this? I happen to run a company that does a large number of banking transactions in the electricity industry and we're pretty far up the technology stack. As far as I'm aware, GPS time signals are not used for any mission critical application in either banking or electricity distribution, I would be interested in specific examples where they are? Also not clear the connection to weather services? Don't know much about radio stations but since I haven't listened to one for years I'm not sure I'd miss them. Cell phone time in third world areas is always wonky for me, worst impact is that my alarm doesn't go off when I expected it to.

This sounds a little like Y2K where everyone vaguely decided that everything must have an internal clock that cared what year it was and decided that there were going to be widespread malfunctions, but it turns out that there was very little impact no matter how little a country spent to prepare for it because in fact there wasn't that much reliance on the item in question.
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Old 29-03-2022, 13:27   #37
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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I would like to see the source on this.
My brother is a top dev for both GPSd and NTP (network time protocol). Precise time from GPS is used in many places, including as a source for NTP servers located around the internet, laboratories, and data collection of all kinds among others. It is not quite as good as having your own atomic clock but done right it is in the micro- and even nano-second range. While most applications are not going to be critical (but potentially expensive) if GPS went down, the loss of a significant number of network time servers could create havoc on the internet: precise time is right at the root of making it all work. It would be interesting to know where the interconnected electric utilities are ultimately sourcing their time - there aren't a lot of options for synchronizing time. I'll have to ask my brother about his thoughts.

BTW the best way to set up a time server is to connect the GPS to a Raspberry Pi with a stripped down Linux OS; more powerful computers have too many interrupts that interfere with precise time. So if you want to set up a network time server it is pretty cheap to do.

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Old 29-03-2022, 14:55   #38
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

Here’s a decent scientific paper on the theory and practicalities of gps spoofing

http://poepper.net/papers/ccs139-tippenhauer.pdf

The second section where they carry out real world experiments is interesting

The reality is gps spoofing can realistically only be carried out against a small number of targets simultaneously. The position of those targets must be known in advance quite precisely ( < 25 m)

It’s a technique that can be applied to a specific target. But it’s not one where every vessel in a large sea area can be spoofed

Gps denial , yes spoofing on a wide scale No.
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Old 29-03-2022, 17:07   #39
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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It would be interesting to know where the interconnected electric utilities are ultimately sourcing their time - there aren't a lot of options for synchronizing time. I'll have to ask my brother about his thoughts.
" In the future, grid systems will require sub-microsecond level accuracy at power substations to implement automatic network management and protection relay functions, and to support fault detection and performance measurements.
...
Today grid systems rely on GNSS clocks as time reference sources and atomic clocks as a backup in case of outages." per https://www.euspa.europa.eu/system/f...sation_web.pdf

For finance, various regulations require traceability to UTC, with granularity down to the millisecond or microsecond depending on the case. This is predominantly an issue for high frequency trading (and I'd question the benefit of HFT in the first place).

My casual impression is that loss of timing would not necessarily be catastrophic, but rather cause a degree of degradation, e.g. instead of the system having a capacity of X transactions per unit time, it might reduced to 0.01X transactions. For cell towers, maybe that manifests as a lack of capacity and only some calls go through. Delivery drivers might have to stop regularly to review and scroll the maps on their phones.

Actually, thinking about it a bit more, the knock-on effects could be similar to COVID-related supply chain shortages but more far-reaching. Much of modern agriculture also relies on precise positioning, so planting and yields might be significantly reduced. So, scratch what I said above about not being catastrophic; I don't think that can be dismissed out of hand.
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Old 30-03-2022, 06:19   #40
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Re: GPS spoofing in the Baltic Sea, how to prepare

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" In the future, grid systems will require sub-microsecond level accuracy at power substations to implement automatic network management and protection relay functions, and to support fault detection and performance measurements.
...
Today grid systems rely on GNSS clocks as time reference sources and atomic clocks as a backup in case of outages." per https://www.euspa.europa.eu/system/f...sation_web.pdf

For finance, various regulations require traceability to UTC, with granularity down to the millisecond or microsecond depending on the case. This is predominantly an issue for high frequency trading (and I'd question the benefit of HFT in the first place).

My casual impression is that loss of timing would not necessarily be catastrophic, but rather cause a degree of degradation, e.g. instead of the system having a capacity of X transactions per unit time, it might reduced to 0.01X transactions. For cell towers, maybe that manifests as a lack of capacity and only some calls go through. Delivery drivers might have to stop regularly to review and scroll the maps on their phones.

Actually, thinking about it a bit more, the knock-on effects could be similar to COVID-related supply chain shortages but more far-reaching. Much of modern agriculture also relies on precise positioning, so planting and yields might be significantly reduced. So, scratch what I said above about not being catastrophic; I don't think that can be dismissed out of hand.
I'm not sure that a marketing piece put out by one of the GNSS systems is a great source of reliable info? They go with the same vague hand waving, I mean "Precision timing is a key enabling technology for the protection, metering, and control of substation functions. In the future, grid systems will require sub-microsecond level accuracy at power substations to implement automatic network management and protection relay functions, and to support fault detection and performance measurements." sounds great, they even bookends that paragraph with liberal use of the trendy buzzword "smart grid", I mean who wants a "dumb grid" right? But I have yet to see a specific meter, protection device, protection relay.... that relied on a universal reference time. As an electrical engineer I would need to hear an at least moderately technical explanation, perhaps at a minimum naming specifically what kind of "protection relay" and how at least at a high level it required universal millisecond time to work. The link you provided pretty much demonstrates my point, this is all vague marketing fluff and hand waving with a few technical sounding buzzwords randomly thrown in to make it sound impressive to the non-technical crowd, just like Y2K.
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