This is just yet another cost and side-effect of a deeply unpopular, business-destroying, corrupt regime.
Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
111–120 of 162 posts
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#112Since most of these ADS-B collection sites are patchworks of unofficial/best effort, that seems like a great attack vector for nation state-level spoofing to interrupt flight planning, capacity planning, other tertiary air transport operations, and make civilians nervous. It's analogous to "hobby" code running key infrastructure of the internet without serious processes and auditing, testing, and verification.
It would be far better and more reliable to have the FAA do it by providing authoritative single source of truth as (selectively) open data rather than depend upon the whims / greed / sloppiness of an over-privatized utility. ATCs need and/or have this data anyhow, so in the future, it should be provided.
How do less neoliberal European countries do it?
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#113Hilarious
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#114As other commenters noted, this is almost certainly not RF spoofing, just sending bad data to an aggregator (ADS-B Exchange) over the internet. This instance of spoofing is notable for being the first that I know of that wasn't primitive vector art or text, but a raster image! In that area of Florida multiple receivers would have picked up actual ADS-B broadcasts. ADS-B aggregators do have various anti-spoofing measu…
Just because I don't often get a chance to talk about this, I'll mention that there was a malfunction/accident/bug that caused what you might call spoofed signals to go out around Long Island and New York. Really interesting case where it seems that an FAA system wasn't handling magnetic declination correctly, which led to it generating false TIS-B targets that were rotated 13 degrees from real aircraft positions, fr…
whoa, i saw your initial tweet about this, but never saw your follow up that confirmed the magnetic declination association. the convergence back to the ground radar is brilliant. nice find.
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
ADS-B is packet data telemetry broadcast unencrypted and unauthenticated by aircraft on 1090MHz. Anyone can receive it, and many do. FlightRadar and others have networks of people with receivers that forward all received packets to central servers. The aircraft self-report location, heading, altitude, etc, so anyone can transmit packets making ghost planes. I am somewhat surprised nobody has stashed an ADS-B spoofer…
Fake signals are not uncommon, but mostly accidental. They are dealt with very quickly when causing traffic control problems
Sure, but traffic control problems can still be caused (temporarily) by abuse of the frequency/protocol by those intending to cause disruption.
Can you tell me more about the fake signals? Who sends them? Why? How often?
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#116This was not spoofed at the ADS-B layer. It was just spoofed to adsb exchange. (While typically a feeder contributes to multiple sites, this one didn't.) eg: - https://globe.adsb.fi/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zo... - https://adsb.lol/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zoom=14... Relevant discussion on r/adsb: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1qp3q9n/interesting/ where they note it's also absent on FR2…
I had also posted this story earlier, then deleted it once I learned that. However, I did find this interesting doc about real ADS-B spoofing, which does not appear to be very easy:
https://www.icao.int/sites/default/files/APAC/Meetings/2025/...
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#117As other commenters noted, this is almost certainly not RF spoofing, just sending bad data to an aggregator (ADS-B Exchange) over the internet. This instance of spoofing is notable for being the first that I know of that wasn't primitive vector art or text, but a raster image! In that area of Florida multiple receivers would have picked up actual ADS-B broadcasts. ADS-B aggregators do have various anti-spoofing measu…
I agree with this. Hopefully they're able to track down who did this. To upload to ADS-B Exchange you need an account. But it's not that difficult to get one. I'm not sure what kind of information they may be able to get on it. As you say the person who uploaded this may not be anywhere near there. The aggregators probably should have heuristics like if only one feeder in an area with a decent density of feeder coverage uploads an anomalous track, it should get flagged.
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#118Most likely they spoofed the reporting API to "FlightAware" or other ADSB crowd-data-sourced sites and didn't spoof "ADSB Signals"
Actually spoofing ADSB radio signals could very well land you in prison with a $100,000 fine. The FCC is very eager to find and fine you for these kinds of stunts. Spamming flightaware is much less severe, but still... it's not cute to mess with life-safety critical infrastructure.
FlightAware isn't safety critical. If it was then being able to spoof it in this manner would be negligence on the part of the operator.
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#119Please explain the tech.
ADS-B is packet data telemetry broadcast unencrypted and unauthenticated by aircraft on 1090MHz. Anyone can receive it, and many do. FlightRadar and others have networks of people with receivers that forward all received packets to central servers. The aircraft self-report location, heading, altitude, etc, so anyone can transmit packets making ghost planes. I am somewhat surprised nobody has stashed an ADS-B spoofer…
> I’ve still never seen or heard tell of RF ADS-B spoofing.
Probably because the required expertise, effort, risk, and reward ratios don't work out. You can cause a minor disturbance that isn't particularly visible and in exchange get investigated by the FBI. Seems about as wise as attempting to graffiti the front gate of a military base.
Re: Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
#120This has gotta be some sort of federal crime
I believe this was "spoofed" only in the sense that a particular provider/online platform accepted data via an API that was abused to draw this on that platform only. Searching around it seems it was not found if you looked on other platforms, so it might not even have been a crime. I believe they didn't emit any real "signals" just took advantage of an API that should probably be better secured.
> an API that should probably be better secured.
I think the API is secured? The entire premise is that a volunteer creates an account and uploads ADS-B telemetry. Detecting falsified data is a separate matter.