Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
1–10 of 102 posts
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#2I am seeing this more and more. I've seen the ability to have a phone take over an airplane, a laptop control a car, now a laptop taking over a ship... where are all the security guys at when this stuff is implemented?
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#3I am seeing this more and more. I've seen the ability to have a phone take over an airplane, a laptop control a car, now a laptop taking over a ship... where are all the security guys at when this stuff is implemented?
Being told by sales and project managers that this stuff had been considered and deemed not a priority as it's unlikely ever to occur in real life.
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#4Yeah if they just used their paper charts, logged the position and compared GPS with the dead reckoning (or depth lines, radar shore returns,..) the attackers would have a much harder time... My sailing instructor always stressed that GPS is unreliable and especially when close to danger one should cross check what it says with other methods. Came in handy when my plotter failed.
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#5Yeah if they just used their paper charts, logged the position and compared GPS with the dead reckoning (or depth lines, radar shore returns,..) the attackers would have a much harder time... My sailing instructor always stressed that GPS is unreliable and especially when close to danger one should cross check what it says with other methods. Came in handy when my plotter failed.
There is more to it than that though. Aircraft often fly instrument approaches using GPS alone, getting to within 500 feet of the ground while still in clouds. If someone could make the aircraft think it was just a couple extra miles in the wrong direction it could be disastrous.
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#6Yeah if they just used their paper charts, logged the position and compared GPS with the dead reckoning (or depth lines, radar shore returns,..) the attackers would have a much harder time... My sailing instructor always stressed that GPS is unreliable and especially when close to danger one should cross check what it says with other methods. Came in handy when my plotter failed.
There is more to it than that though. Aircraft often fly instrument approaches using GPS alone, getting to within 500 feet of the ground while still in clouds. If someone could make the aircraft think it was just a couple extra miles in the wrong direction it could be disastrous.
No they don't, they land with something called ILS
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#7That's cool! Reminds me of the way the Iranian most likely got control over a US drone a couple of years back.
They jammed communication signals and faked GPS data when automatic "go back to home base" landing procedure kicked in.
http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/iran-hacked-...
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is more to it than that though. Aircraft often fly instrument approaches using GPS alone, getting to within 500 feet of the ground while still in clouds. If someone could make the aircraft think it was just a couple extra miles in the wrong direction it could be disastrous.
No they don't, they land with something called ILS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system
There is more airports in US that have GPS only approaches than airports that have ILS approaches. For example: http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1308/05879R25.PDF
500 ft altitude with GPS only (without vertical guidance). LPV minimum is 300 ft.
Category III ILS minimum is 200 ft, Cat II -- 100 ft. But there are a lot of airports where ILS is not available.
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#9Click bait title(same as the article, for what its worth). $80mil yacht uses same GPS as a $80 sell phone, the 6 zeros dont change that.
To the actual issue, i wonder how practical this is? In that i mean what level of power output is required to override the correct signal and at what distance? Is this something that could be a real issue, impractical? What?
Re: Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht
#10I am seeing this more and more. I've seen the ability to have a phone take over an airplane, a laptop control a car, now a laptop taking over a ship... where are all the security guys at when this stuff is implemented?
>where are all the security guys at when this stuff is implemented?
It doesn't matter where they are, because where they're not is in management. During development, if attacks like this are even considered at all, its a very low probability incident, isolated to a very small number of targeted units and requires people doing things that can be dismissed by rhetorically asking "why would anyone ever do X?"
Computer security in general is abysmal. It's not for a lack of security guys trying. Good security costs time and money, but the return is practically invisible. The only reason the little bit we have exists at all is either that people have lost money, regulation, or an easy to spot practice has become trendy enough that people will chide others for not following them.