Commercial aircraft flying over the Middle East are under ``unimaginable GPS attacks'' and are at risk of unintentional airspace violations.
In late September 2023,
GPS Spoofing: Pilot QRH – Hotspots and What To Expect – International Ops 2023 – OPSGROUP
https://ops.group/blog/gps-spoofing-pilot-qrh-hotspots-and-what-to-expect/
Commercial Flights Are Experiencing 'Unthinkable' GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bk3v/commercial-flights-are-experiencing-unthinkable-gps-attacks-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do
In late September, multiple commercial aircraft flying over nearby Iran received spoofed GPS signals from an unknown source. As a result, the navigation system misunderstood the aircraft as if it were flying somewhere far from its actual location, causing it to lose track of its current location. One of the damaged aircraft was said to have almost entered Iranian airspace without permission.
In a November report, OPSGROUP said damage from a series of GPS attacks was concentrated in three areas: Baghdad, Iraq, Cairo, Egypt, and Tel Aviv, Israel, tracking more than 50 cases in the five weeks starting in late September. states that he did.
GPS spoofing, a method of manipulating GPS signals to display false location information, has existed for some time, but there has never been a case of its use as an attack to destroy an aircraft's navigation system. It has been pointed out that it exposes a fundamental flaw in electronics design. Spoofing location information using fake GPS signals destroys the inertial reference system (IRS) , which uses gyroscopes, accelerometers, etc. to support navigation, causing the aircraft's navigation system to malfunction.
OPSGROUP: ``This sounds unimaginable.'' ``The IRS should be a standalone system that cannot be spoofed. Having to ask someone to give you directions is highly unlikely, especially on modern aircraft equipped with the latest avionics systems. It has been confirmed that there are.'
Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies satellite communications, points out that although attacks that interfere with GPS signals have been occurring frequently in the Middle East, the use of GPS spoofing to jam aircraft is new. doing. According to Humphreys, GPS spoofing, which has been used by illegal fishing boats, has insufficient GPS signal data and is aimed at denying GPS services rather than falsifying location information.
Humphreys said: 'GPS and IRS, and their superior backups, are key components of modern aircraft navigation systems. Corrupted GPS readings can cause flight management systems to incorrectly estimate the aircraft's location. 'or synthetic vision systems display incorrect context,' he said, warning that the consequences of a series of GPS attacks could be significant.
The difference between general GPS jamming and this GPS spoofing attack is that while GPS jamming simply interferes with GPS functionality, GPS spoofing also affects the backup IRS. 'This shows that the IRS, which acts as a backup for dead reckoning in the event of GPS failure, is no backup at all in the face of GPS spoofing, because spoofed GPS reception 'The aircraft destroys the IRS, and the IRS calculates based on the wrong location.'
At the time of writing, there is no solution to navigation system failure due to GPS spoofing, and the industry is currently trying to find a countermeasure. Aircraft crews who notice an abnormality have no choice but to rely on air traffic controllers on land, which is not a scalable solution.
'GPS spoofing acts like a zero-day exploit against aviation systems. The aviation industry is completely unprepared and powerless against this,' Humphries said.
Although it is unclear what organization or nation state is behind the series of GPS spoofs, Humphries said, ``I used raw GPS measurements from multiple spacecraft in low Earth orbit to Last week, we identified the source of the spoofed signal as east of Tehran, Iran.
Iran is not the only country conducting GPS spoofing in the region; Clements also confirmed that Israel is also conducting GPS spoofing following a violent military conflict between Israel and Hamas. Israel seems to be using GPS spoofing to thwart missile attacks from terrorists, but it has been pointed out that civilians and commercial aircraft may be harmed in the process. Clements said Israel has warned pilots landing in the country to rely on methods other than GPS to land.
'The strong and persistent spoofing we've been seeing over Israel since around October 15th is almost certainly being carried out by Israel itself,' Humphries said. However, he explained that it is unclear what kind of relationship this has with the fact that just before that, the first attack on a civilian aircraft using GPS spoofing was confirmed near Iran.
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