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Commercial Flights Are Experiencing 'Unthinkable' GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bk3v/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.

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.

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jormaig

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But if they had authentication you would know that the message doesn't come from a legitimate satélite.

Gormadt

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If their isn't then there's a big problem with implementing that now, which would require a retrofit of every single GPS system currently in use and likely a replacement of all GPS satellites

Edit: I'm slightly mistaken, the military uses encryption but they don't have that open for public use.

lolcatnip

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I would hope whoever designed the satellites had the foresight to allow remote software updates.

Ilovethebomb

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They're talking about the millions of receivers around the world, not the satellites.

Restaldt

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Nah we just need a satellite mechanic astronaut

x4740N

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Software updates become useless if you hit hardware limitations

Creat

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you can't have authentication in a one way system. satellites send days, planes receive it, but never send anything.

nailbar

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You can have a digital signature, so the recievers know it's legit

Creat

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yes of course, but that isn't authentication.

nailbar

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Playing with semantics a little, it can be thought of as the satellite authenticating with the client using the signature as password.

x4740N

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That still would be easily defeated, they can just copy the signatures

randombullet

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That's not how PKI works?

Unless you know how digital signatures work better than me

nailbar

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You can't copy a signature, since it is different every time the signed content is different. You need to have the correct key in order to make a valid signature.

zalgotext

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If you've figured out how to do that, a lot of governments would pay you a lot of money for your solution