Spoofing GPS Receivers Cornell News (09/19/08) Ju, Anne
as it appeared in the September 29, 2008 edition of ACM TechNews.
Cornell University researchers have shown that global positioning system (GPS) technology is vulnerable to spoofing, or transmitting fake signals that receivers believe are authentic. At a meeting of the Institute of Navigation in Savannah, Ga., the researchers presented a paper that described how a phony GPS receiver was placed near a navigation device, and tracked, modified, and retransmitted the signals from the system of satellites circling the Earth. The navigation device eventually mistook the false signals as real signals. The team says a GPS attack would have a serious impact considering how ubiquitous the technology has become. "Our goal is to inspire people who design GPS hardware to think about ways to make it so the kinds of things we're showing can be overcome," says Cornell professor Mark Psiaki. The U.S. government described seven countermeasures for a GPS attack in a December 2003 report, but the Cornell team says they would not have foiled its reprogrammed receiver. "We're fairly certain we could spoof all of these, and that's the value of our work," says Cornell researcher Todd Humphreys. Click Here to View Full Article
