Spoofing Attack - GPS Spoofing

GPS Spoofing

A GPS spoofing attack attempts to deceive a GPS receiver by broadcasting a slightly more powerful signal than that received from the GPS satellites, structured to resemble a set of normal GPS signals. These spoofed signals, however, are modified in such a way as to cause the receiver to determine its position to be somewhere other than where it actually is, specifically somewhere determined by the attacker. Because GPS systems work by measuring the time it takes for a signal to travel from the satellite to the receiver, a successful spoofing requires that the attacker know precisely where the target is so that the spoofed signal can be structured with the proper signal delays. A GPS spoofing attack begins by broadcasting a slightly more powerful signal that produces the correct position, and then slowly deviates away towards the position desired by the spoofer, because moving too quickly will cause the receiver to lose signal lock altogether, at which point the spoofer works only as a jammer. It has been suggested that the capture of a Lockheed RQ-170 drone aircraft in northeastern Iran in December, 2011, was the result of such an attack. GPS spoofing attacks had been predicted and discussed in the GPS community previously, but no known example of a malicious spoofing attack has yet been confirmed.