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Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

bleepingcomputer.com

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Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted I'm sure this is true in the sense that general publications use "encrypted" to mean, "There was some sort of cryptographic stuff involved and it went over my head" rather than actually encrypted. Like they do when they tell you that the passwords stolen in a breach were "encrypted with bcrypt" for example. The key thing to pay attention to here is that unlike say,…

I do know the basics of GPS but not much further than this. Wouldn't it be possible to embed a clock in a GPS receiver that gets used when decrypting the packets it receives? So instead of just receiving a encrypted packet and trusting it, it'll decrypt it and check when the message was from and if the slew is more than ~1 minute or whatever, then it is probably forged. That would at least prevent the scenario that y…

The clock slew is how GPS works in the first place. You'd have nothing to compare it to.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#92

Disrupting GPS may result in some economic chaos - it is used for precise time synchronization on financial markets.

Eh? Many exchanges don't offer timestamps beyond millisecond accuracy, which is easily achievable via NTP and atomic clocks on the ground.

Maybe some extreme HFTs doing arbitrage between markets

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#93

> GPS spoofing is hard to stop because the signal the satellites emit from low-Earth orbit to potentially add encryption and certificates cannot be changed. Why ? I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted. They could make a new GPS version on a new frequency with at least crypto signed messages. We can’t have such a flaw on the protocol forever.

> I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted I'm sure this is true in the sense that general publications use "encrypted" to mean, "There was some sort of cryptographic stuff involved and it went over my head" rather than actually encrypted. Like they do when they tell you that the passwords stolen in a breach were "encrypted with bcrypt" for example. The key thing to pay attention to here is that unlike say,…

Receivers and transmitters are synchronized in time, before they are used.

So if the timestamp of the signal deviates of GPS's internal clock, GPS receiver knows it.

Now for commercial receivers, they assume their internal clock is wrong, and set their own time to new GSP time.

Not sure what military GPS receivers do, but I imagine, they kind of thought about this, and just ignore signals that have timestamps that differ too much. This probably means that they need pretty accurate internal clock.

Another way to encrypt a signal is to just have an encrypted sequence going on. If you get a sequence you have already seen something is wrong. Think of it as hash+salt or something similar.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#94
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality shatters your point really quickly, it's even mentioned in the lecture (suggesting you didn't watch it): Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.

My point was the explanations in the video are shower thoughts. If you want to understand why Russia is how it is just read a real history work on Russia not this guy’s shower thoughts

What are some sources you'd recommend? The thing that impressed me about the colonel's lecture is that it seems to have had some predictive power. Someone who watched that lecture a couple of years ago will be less surprised at Putin's actions today.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#95
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggesting Russians are playing a rational game here? I think the cover has been pulled on the Russian "master strategy".. it's literally a hierarchy of terror and lies, where everyone will do whatever it takes to please the irrational autocrat. I have been spamming this lecture everywhere since the war started and again I think anyone who's still questioning the Russian operative reality should watch it: Evaluation…

Well, it might be so but what's the point in Russia pissing off Finland while a good chunk of its forces is dedicated to the war in Ukraine? They're irrational but surely going "Let's start a war on TWO fronts!" is a step too far even for them?

There's no way Russia pissing Finland off to any conceivable degree would risk war or military retaliation from present-day Finland. None.

The same goes for any other Nordic (and Baltic) countries.

The current Russian regime likes to demonstrate its power now and then, though, and to try and project its influence through intimidation. They can do that with their significantly smaller neighbours with no risk of military retaliation.

There are risks, of course, but those would be in the form of deteriorating relationships and the associated economical costs, or from losing overall international rapport and respect. Those don't seem to matter much to the current regime in Russia, though.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#96
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This must be how the allies felt in 1939 wondering what Germany’s master plan could possibly have been. Of course, they couldn’t have foreseen Hitler being a bumbling buffoon all along.

Yeah, but Hitler had the Wehrmacht and all the competence there. Putin only has… whoever is responsible for that megaconvoy stalled for a week, in uncontrolled airspace.

Putin has what he designed and built. The incompetence and low status of the army at this scale mostly exists because Putin is afraid of the army, that’s why he appoints mostly “security guys” for the top spots and now has his own private army.

Putin’s Russia is a police state pretending to be a military state.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#97
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted I'm sure this is true in the sense that general publications use "encrypted" to mean, "There was some sort of cryptographic stuff involved and it went over my head" rather than actually encrypted. Like they do when they tell you that the passwords stolen in a breach were "encrypted with bcrypt" for example. The key thing to pay attention to here is that unlike say,…

I mean ... That's what's cryptography is for. Making sure that what you receive is from the sender you expect it from. Ie sign the current data package plus the current time. Receivers ignore everything with an incorrect timestamp and/or wrong signature. Now you only have to make sure that you don't lose your private keys.

But these signals are from the real GPS birds, and they are really the ones for Las Vegas three weeks ago. They are completely authentic.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#98
post #3

The clear suggestion is that it is Russia doing it. Other than as an f-u, I don’t understand why they would though. If I have an effective weapon (GPS spoofer), surely I don’t want to alert the enemy to it, lest they develop defences. So eg say NATO were overreliant on GPS, incidents of spoofing like this will cause them to rethink and reduce that reliance, or harden the system.

Suggesting Russians are playing a rational game here? I think the cover has been pulled on the Russian "master strategy".. it's literally a hierarchy of terror and lies, where everyone will do whatever it takes to please the irrational autocrat. I have been spamming this lecture everywhere since the war started and again I think anyone who's still questioning the Russian operative reality should watch it: Evaluation…

You can see lots of things about Putin, but being irrational is not one of them.

Putin behavior makes lots of sense. In fact way more sense that European leaders for example.

For example: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Putin-German-nuc...

There is a video of that more than ten years ago.

Here Putin was saying that Germany energy strategy was nuts and he was right. How stupid some leader could be to make her country dependent on outside countries for something as strategic as energy?

Putin told everybody what he thought about Ukraine. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

Even the "I will push the nuclear button because I have nothing to loose" is pretty rational. It worked wonders multiple times.

Just because he is our enemy now does not mean he is stupid. He is not.

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#99
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel I can't take this talk seriously. it's just a bunch of history bits used to explain and reinforce stereotypes about Russians. "Russians like strong leaders" because Russia was once invaded by mongols who also had strong leaders. Russians always think the leader is infallible because he gets his power from God. Then almost in the next sentence he says Russians hat…

Reality shatters your point really quickly, it's even mentioned in the lecture (suggesting you didn't watch it): Russians have literally had 8 years of democracy in the past 600+ years, otherwise it's always been an autocracy.

The Yeltsin regime was more democratic to you?

How so?

Re: Finnish govt agency warns of unusual aircraft GPS interference

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the military GPS signals were encrypted I'm sure this is true in the sense that general publications use "encrypted" to mean, "There was some sort of cryptographic stuff involved and it went over my head" rather than actually encrypted. Like they do when they tell you that the passwords stolen in a breach were "encrypted with bcrypt" for example. The key thing to pay attention to here is that unlike say,…

I do know the basics of GPS but not much further than this. Wouldn't it be possible to embed a clock in a GPS receiver that gets used when decrypting the packets it receives? So instead of just receiving a encrypted packet and trusting it, it'll decrypt it and check when the message was from and if the slew is more than ~1 minute or whatever, then it is probably forged. That would at least prevent the scenario that y…

GPS receiver does not know exact time. It has a built-in clock, but that clock is not very precise and is only used to speed up signal acquisition. The exact time is determined from the received signals.

GPS receiver can determine its own position (and get exact time in the process) even after internal clock battery dies, or when internal clock drifts too much. Such cold start takes longer, but is possible.

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