[19217] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my radio report yesterday on disruption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PRIVACY Forum mailing list)
Tue Aug 13 10:16:16 2024
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2024 07:06:30 -0700
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This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on disruption
risks to satellite-based navigation systems such as GPS (GNSS). As
always, there were a few very minor wording changes as I presented
this live.
- - -
So let's start with definitions. What is widely referred to as GPS,
around the world in fact, of course stands for Global Positioning
System. But actually it's just one implementation -- the very first
one -- of what is more broadly called GNSS, which is Global Navigation
Satellite System. So GPS is the United States' Department of Defense
version of GNSS, and for quite a number of years it was the only
operational GNSS system.
The program started under the name Navstar GPS in 1973, first
satellite launch in 78, and a full constellation of satellites, at the
time 24 of them were up and running by 1993. The current U.S. GPS
system has just over 30 satellites plus a few spares plus GPS
satellites not in regular operation right now for other reasons.
But currently there are several operational GNSS systems and they're
all compatible enough that single devices can be designed to
simultaneously use more than one system for better availability and
accuracy, and this is very commonly done in modern phones and other
mobile devices. So a device may work all at once with our GPS GNSS,
the Russian GLONASS GNSS, the EU Galileo GNSS, and the Chinese BeiDou
GNSS. So there are a bunch of satellites up there in medium Earth
orbit providing these services globally.
And GNSS doesn't just tell phone users, car drivers, and plane pilots,
etc. where they are, GNSS systems are also critical to keeping mobile
and other communications networks synchronized and operational, and a
vast number of other applications, a list that's growing all the time.
So we've become very dependent on GNSS, and often the older
terrestrial radio and other systems that predate GNSS have been taken
down or otherwise no longer function. So as you can imagine, when
something goes wrong with GNSS, it can be very bad news. And in fact,
because the radio signals from GNSS satellites are so relatively
weak -- that's why it can be hard to get a position fix inside buildings
for example -- it's not very difficult for them to be disrupted either
accidentally or on purpose.
And equipment for purposely doing this at least over limited areas can
be very inexpensive, and isn't necessarily limited only to jamming
which prevents getting a location fix, but it's even possible to spoof
fake positions that will show up on GNSS receivers.
Now you might ask who would want to mess around with GNSS signals this
way, and of course there's people who just do it for fun to prove they
can, but on a larger scale, it's mainly governments that do this.
Because disrupting the GNSS receiving capabilities of an adversary
country can potentially be an effective defense or wartime tactic,
affecting the ability of weapons to home in on their targets and much
more.
And in fact the U.S. does this too, and tests it here in the U.S.
There've been multiple instances of commercial aircraft having
navigation issues because of this. Usually our military issues
warnings to pilots when GNSS jamming tests are planned. But these tend
to be rather nonspecific in terms of exactly where the disruptions
will be and so there's been a lot of controversy about this involving
the U.S. FAA and airlines and lots of other concerned parties.
And in the meantime, the cost of equipment needed to do small scale
GNSS jamming or spoofing has continued to plummet even as we depend
more and more on GNSS in our daily lives, whether we realize it or
not.
And that's really the ultimate concern. It's a great example of how
technologies that we depend on for so much of importance can still be
relatively fragile, opening up all sorts of very problematic
scenarios. And while there are ongoing efforts to harden GNSS against
various forms of attack and manipulations, like so many of our
technologies it's likely to be a continuing battle of wits, that never
... really ... ends.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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