Illegal GPS Jammers Are Widespread, Study Finds

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/illegal-gps-jammers-are-widespread-study-finds-62443

by baha_man • 14 years ago

67 52 14 years ago

techweekeurope.co.uk

smoyer3• 14 years ago

Should we really be surprised that people don't want to be tracked everywhere they go? Isn't my location also a matter of privacy? I wonder where you buy one of these jammers.

dalke• 14 years ago

If you read all the way through, you would had seen the link to a site to buy one at the end.

smoyer3• 14 years ago

I saw the link ... and wouldn't waste my money since my cars don't have trackers (three are 1971 models that barely have an electric system). What I meant was that I could understand why people would want one of these devices.

zbowling6• 14 years ago

Tracking is different than just getting your own location. GPS receivers only receive data. You still need a radio or recording device to track (realtime or deferred) where you are or have been.

Natsu• 14 years ago

They're not blocking the signal from their own cars, but from their employer's. And possibly using it to cheat on their taxes as well.

They could probably put a stop to this by making jammer detectors and inspecting for them at weigh stations and then checking the logs on the GPS for anomalies. If the cops have a jammer detector, they can start pulling people over for having them.

If a few people lose their CDL, they should fall out of favor. These aren't very easy to hide, given that they have to broadcast to work. And if this pushes them to invent some other way to tamper with their GPS monitors, so much the better: it wouldn't cause nearly as much harm as these.

GiraffeNecktie• 14 years ago

How vulnerable are Google's self-driving cars to GPS jamming?

zitterbewegung• 14 years ago

You can still drive the car? Also, google has wifi methods of knowing where the car is and they still have computer vision. I think what you would want to do is jam all the frequencies that the google car receives. A better question is how could you try to make the system drive somewhere that you want to.

uptown• 14 years ago

There's absolutely no way Google is falling-back to the less-specific WiFi geolocation for self-driving cars.

mistercow2• 14 years ago

It would be far more effective to simply rely on dead reckoning until GPS service is restored.

asdfaoeu2• 14 years ago

Presumably just as vulnerable as someone who doesn't know where to drive without their GPS.

What would be interesting is though with a network of self driving cars you could figure out where all the GPS jammers were.

msftguy• 14 years ago

They have LiDAR, GPS, radars, inertial reference unit, steering wheel angle sensor and high-precision odometry (left rear wheel rotation sensor). Afaik, LiDAR/map convergence is actually used for localization.. at least it's the case for the street view car, per http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdPwaWATYKg&feature=plcp

stfu• 14 years ago

I remember reading a long time ago some odd story, that one would be able to disable instruments at a relatively low flying airplane, by aiming at it a conventional parabolic satellite dish with a strong microwave component mounted on it. Anyone care to explain if this was just some urban myth or if there is any truth to that? Are there any other ways to "jamm" digital devices from a distance?

Edit: The story seems to be too simplistic, but it there are at least certain devices around that use microwave power to jamm electronics: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/PPC.2009.5386327 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_HPM_Blackout

rcthompson• 14 years ago

GPS isn't accurate enough to tell you what lane you're in. I'm sure it uses GPS for navigation, but it must use active sensors on the car itself for the actual driving.

hyperlidar• 14 years ago

Google Street View cars have many ways of finding themselves in our world and knowing what is around them (which msftguy have kindly specified) but I guess GPS navigation is its primary instrument and without it it will be unable to drive anywhere. Device like this - http://www.jammer-store.com/gj6-all-civil-gps-signal-jammer-... - or maybe other one can easily block its GPS signal and stop it in case of emergency.

keithpeter• 14 years ago

I'm UK based and I think we do have a tendency in the UK towards low redundancy in key systems, mainly to save money.

For example, the London Underground used to have its own small power stations. These needed refurb/upgrade about 20 years ago, cost £12million, so not done, bridge to National Grid instead.

No big problems since, because there are several connections, complete failure would need almost complete black out in London, but unpleasant when it happens locally

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556910/Power-failure...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4108-double-failure-ca...

Perhaps National UK systems need more duplication and less reliance on central systems like GPS?

I've seen reports of a plan to use mobile phone based signals on railways to offset problems with antiquated wiring and cable theft...

http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.8564

At present, when there are problems on the local commuter trains, we can fall back on 'sole possession of the way' although the drivers no longer have the brass tokens. The driver stops the train, gets out of the cab and resets the signal, which sets the signal on the next section of track to danger, so no other train will enter that section until train clears it. Not sure if they will keep the wiring that allows that in the future.

arethuza• 14 years ago

My favourite example of this is the way the PM would have launched the nuclear V-bombers towards the Soviet Union in the late 50s and early 60s: using the AA radio network!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve...

brudgers• 14 years ago

Just reading the article rather than relying on other sources, this sounds like the sort of report used to justify one or more additional government contracts in the name of "national security".

To put it another way, the only solution is already known - build critical systems which are not dependent on continuous access to GPS signals. One cannot prevent jambing of a widespread consumer system - the asymmetry of costs and knowledge is too far in favor of the jammer in any civilian case (military solutions to jamming are another matter).

NelsonMinar2• 14 years ago

The risk these things pose to aviation is real. There's been a huge shift towards GPS for instrument flying. Cross country flying frequently relies on GPS to know where you are. Even more important, flying an approach to land now often uses GPS to keep the plane to a specific safe path, essential when flying in a cloud. A plane isn't going to fly out of the sky if GPS suddenly stops working, but it can make life awfully difficult.

The risk is not just theoretical. For example, in 2009 the Newark airport had a daily GPS failure that was finally traced to a trucker using a jammer, presumably to defeat a tracker enforcing safe driving rules. http://www.economist.com/node/18304246

gatlin• 14 years ago

I just saw a demonstration a few days a go by the UT Austin Radio Navigation lab where they spoofed L1 GPS and caused a radio controlled helicopter to somewhat precisely veer off course. I'm interested in the impact of this on aviation as well.

zbowling6• 14 years ago

The more sophisticated jammers don't cause "noise", but rather they record and replay the pseudorandom generated digits they receive from the various frequencies and time drift them. It's hard to triangulate much of anything then and it could send you off miles from where you think you are.

Much better than just noise because you wouldn't know there is a problem.

NelsonMinar2• 14 years ago

This attack is what Iran says they did to capture the US drone a few months ago. It's pretty crazy that GPS signals include no cryptographic authentication, even for military use.

I'm not so worried about this kind of attack on civilian aviation. It would be a directed attack: potentially deadly but rare and focussed. I'm much more worried about the casual disruption to GPS from truck drivers spending $99 on a grey market device.

drsim2• 14 years ago

Interesting article, but why the spam?

"buy online at dedicated websites like www.[snip].co.uk, and a basic model costs just around £60"

Hmm...

bestes• 14 years ago

I thought it was refreshing to see that link, even though I didn't click on it. Seems more honest and would have saved me the detour through Google to find it myself.

drsim2• 14 years ago

At Google you'd have been given at least an array of options. If the site was transparent about any commercial interest in the vendor I'd agree with you.

maxerickson2• 14 years ago

The linked BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17119768

is a little clearer on how widespread the usage is. It estimates that there may be as few as 50 jamming incidents per day in the UK, or as many as 450.

If a jammer is driving by more than 1 of their stations or driving by a station 2 times a day, the whole thing could be explained by a few dozen of them being in use.

droithomme• 14 years ago

I really appreciate the link they provided at the end of where to buy one.

These personal sized units are not really a risk to aviation etc as is being said, that is just an argument to make the public turn against the freedom from unwanted surveillance that jammers bring. These work by transmitting noise at the frequencies that the GPS satellites transmit at so the local receiver can't tell where it is, which is the same as when it's in a tunnel or parking garage. The range on these battery operated personal ones is only a few feet, so no naval ships or airplanes thousands of feet or miles away are bothered. The ones that bother fishing boats and such are high powered transmitters designed to block other parties at a distance and have nothing to do with these small ones people use to stop their boss knowing what they are doing with the company delivery truck.

lsc• 14 years ago

the problem is that the legitimate GPS signal is ridiculously weak, and generally speaking, to reliably jam, you need a significantly stronger signal. (well, and compared to a solar-powered transmitter on a satellite, it's pretty hard not to have a significantly stronger signal) I'm not a RF guy myself, but I hang out with a bunch of them. Guaranteeing that your jammer only had a range of a few feet sounds... difficult.

I personally know people that have had problems with their systems that have been traced back to truckers with GPS jammers.

jjwiseman• 14 years ago

Last month in South Korea a surveillance drone lost GPS, possibly due to jamming by North Korea, and as a result crashed into its control truck, killing one engineer and injuring two pilots:

  Although North Korea was intermittently jamming GPS in the
  border region between 28 April and 15 May it is not known
  if the jammer was operating at the time of the fatal crash.
  The South has reacted angrily to the jamming, which has
  interrupted navigation on more than 600 civilian flights -
  and it has been likened to a form of terrorism by regional
  media.

  "All information recovered to date indicates that after a
  loss of GPS signals to the aircraft's receivers incorrect
  handling and omissions over a time period of a number of
  minutes, resulted in an unfortunate chain of events that
  ultimately led to the crash," the statement says.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/gps-los...

On a historical note, if this turns out not to have been caused by GPS jamming and was purely an accident, I think this will be the first case of an accidental death caused by a drone (not counting people erroneously but intentionally targeted by drone weapons).

Zirro• 14 years ago

Reminds me of some thieves who had stolen a great load of valuable electronics and other items here in Sweden, and put strong jammers in the house where they stored it.

Instead of hiding their location, this actually gave them away as it had been disturbing the GPS-coverage in this area. When the source of the jamming was found, the police was alerted and the thieves arrested.

K2h• 14 years ago

thats profound. you bring up a good point that it will ow be fairly straight forward to map, find, and correct jammed (or low power) GPS signal.

i have long thought government postal carriers and other government vehicles should be required to stream realtime road congestion and traffic flow data.. this data could also show jammed or poor reception.

joshu• 14 years ago

I wonder how hard it would be to build a detector. I coul mount it on my front porch.

Illegal GPS Jammers Are Widespread, Study Finds

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