Attackers spoof aircraft navigation systems, sending planes dangerously off course

[Jan]

Dozens of planes sent off course with unprecedented navigation system attacks

Dozens of commercial airliners flying over parts of the Middle East have reported a serious new spoofing attack on their navigation systems over the past few months, Vice's Motherboard reports.

A group of pilots and flight technicians called OPSGROUP first raised the alarm about the issue in September 2023.

 

[DapperDanMan]

Records are meant to be broken.

Sknyliv air show disaster - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[epah]

@Dave Still want to fly?

A malfunctioning Car GPS at least wont get you killed unless you are an American driving through Nyanga.

 

[Dups!]

@Dave Still want to fly?

A malfunctioning Car GPS at least wont get you killed unless you are an American driving through Nyanga.

Honestly, I am not a fan of flying. I do it begrudgingly.

 

[rvZA]

Id them and bomb their houses or offices with drones.

 

[Bliksis]

@Dave Still want to fly?

A malfunctioning Car GPS at least wont get you killed unless you are an American driving through Nyanga.

Even then, he didn't get killed.

 

[Bliksis]

Id them and bomb their houses or offices with drones.

And shoot them in their driveways.

 

[epah]

Even then, he didn't get killed.

This proves once again that cars are way safer than planes.

 

[RonSwanson]

Records are meant to be broken.

Sknyliv air show disaster - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 1621555

Apparently so, allow me to present this Tupolev TU-134 from 1986:

 

[rvZA]

And shoot them in their driveways.

Yes, yes. There too.

 

[Dooks111]

my guess is Iran

 

[Gravedigger]

It's long since known that GPS signals can be spoofed, by broadcasting fake data from the ground, and/or overpowering the GPS frequency spectrum with fake data, or simply jamming them.

Probably both cases here, but even I can spoof my own GPS data with a LimeSDR and pieces of software, but they just scaled it up to a larger scale.

Remember, GPS signals can be weak, thus requiring special antennas, etc, and moving under a roof or inside a house, your GPS cold-starting may take a long time to get a fix, or not even get one, so overpowering a GPS signal should be very easy for an attacker.

Encryption would not have helped here, because the signal jammers can probably jam it enough to force it to fall back to normal unencrypted GPS signals, or overpowering the signal, defeating the purpose of GPS.

 

[netstrider]

@Dave Still want to fly?

A malfunctioning Car GPS at least wont get you killed unless you are an American driving through Nyanga.

Autonomous motor vehicles can lock your doors and speed off a cliff on a whim. Be it software glitch or hack.

 

[Rumple4skin]

While not getting spoofed (GPS thinking it's in a different position), we do get jammed (losing all GPS signal) on every single flight on our Hong Kong - Europe route since the Ukraine war started.

This happens during the segment over the Black Sea, just north of Turkey. Lately we also started getting cases of the aircraft clock suddenly being wrong by as much as 1 hour while being jammed, as its time is UTC synchronized from the GPS.

It's a non-event really, as we have checklists and back up navigation systems to deal with it. I imagine spoofing to be much more dangerous, as it seems the aircraft is unable to detect it (it detects jamming), and being sent off course in those areas with so much restricted airspace and war zones can end up in disaster.

 

[Rumple4skin]

..and I just watched a tiktok video of neil de grasse explaining how safe american airlines have become.

The safety of airlines in the US is irrelevant to GPS spoofing in the Middle East though.