Commercial Flights Are Experiencing ‘Unthinkable’ GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do::New “spoofing” attacks resulting in total navigation failure have been occurring above the Middle East for months, which is “highly significant” for airline safety.

  • ironeagl@sh.itjust.works
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    11 months ago

    The GPS chips have internal limits on how fast they think they can move. If they determine that they are moving faster than 300m/s they will stop outputting any results for a period of time. This limit is, IIRC, put in at the silicon level, so only military chips can bypass it.

    If you try to use mapping apps on a plane you sometimes run into this issue.

    • sanmarzano@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It is trivial to make your GPS receiver firmware ignore these limits. There are even open-source receivers (SwiftNav piksi, for example). Modifying a binary is much harder, but not impossible for a motivated state like Iran or Russia. It’s best to think of the COCOM limits as suggestions.

    • EarMaster@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      But even the fastest airliners at the moment (A330 neo) moves slower than 300m/s. Wikipedia claims that COCOM limits are even higher so I don’t think that they are the reason for the inaccurate tracking on planes.

    • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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      11 months ago

      Oh, neat. I was not aware of that. I have seen that before but thought it was due to the phone not being able to lock on to the signal from inside a big metal tube.