Not news - GPS spoofing
There has been a lot of press about GPS spoofing -- prompting a GPS receiver to indicate a different position than where it really is.
Here is one example from
Network World:
College students hijack $80 million yacht with GPS signal spoofing
A group of students at the University of Texas at Austin built and successfully tested a GPS spoofing device to remotely redirect an $80 million yacht onto a different route, the Houston Chronicle reports. The project, which was completed with the permission of the yacht's owners in the Mediterranean Sea this past June.
Because the yacht's crew relies entirely on GPS signal for direction, the students were able to lead the yacht onto a different course without the knowledge of anyone on-board. The GPS spoofing device essentially over-powered all other GPS signals using until the spoofed signal was the only one that the yacht followed. The yacht's navigation system merely recognized it as another signal, so the yacht changed course without setting off any alarms.
A couple of objections -- any boat driver worth their salt is not relying on only the GPS for navigation. They are using their eyes, a compass, RADAR bearings to known objects, depth soundings compared to published depths, an autopilot (which on large boats will get positioning data from several sources) as well as common sense. Larger ships will also have inertial navigation systems. The fact that one of your sources of positioning data is different than your others should be noticed immediately, not be the cause of the ships steering errors.
GPS is also problematic when visiting areas that are not frequently visited -- charts can be off by several hundred feet.
GPS spoofing? Sure. But no effect in the real world. No danger unless the crew is inept.
Posted by DaveH at July 29, 2013 9:20 PM