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Defense against Drones: GPS jamming and spoofing
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/drone-hijacking/all/
On the evening of June 19, a group of researchers from the University of Texas successfully hijacked a civilian drone at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during a test organized by the Department of Homeland Security.
The drone, an Adaptive Flight Hornet Mini, was hovering at around 60 feet, locked into a predetermined position guided by GPS. Then, with a device that cost around $1,000 and the help of sophisticated software that took four years to develop, the researchers sent a radio signal from a hilltop one kilometer away. In security lingo, they carried out a spoofing attack.
“We fooled the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) into thinking that it was rising straight up,” says Todd Humphreys, assistant professor at the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas.
Deceiving the drone’s GPS receiver, they changed its perceived coordinates. To compensate, the small copter dove straight down, thinking it was returning to its programmed position. If not for a safety pilot intervening before the drone hit the ground, it would have crashed.
But for Humphreys playing the part of an evil genius in a thriller movie, everything worked exactly to plan. “It was beautiful,” he tells Danger Room.
Since its signals comes from satellites at very high altitude, GPS relies on very weak signals that are extremely vulnerable not only to spoofing attacks but also to jamming – the deliberate or accidental transmission of radio signals that interfere with regular communications.
This weakness has already been exposed in a few incidents in the past. In late 2009, GPS receivers at Newark Airport were going down intermittently every day and no one understood why. It took two months to track down the source of the interference: a driver had installed in his truck an illegal GPS jammer – which can easily be bought online for $50– so that his employer couldn’t track his every move. In 2001, a boat’s television antenna preamplifier took out GPS over the entire harbor town of Moss Landing, just south of San Francisco, for weeks.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/drone-hijacking/all/
On the evening of June 19, a group of researchers from the University of Texas successfully hijacked a civilian drone at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during a test organized by the Department of Homeland Security.
The drone, an Adaptive Flight Hornet Mini, was hovering at around 60 feet, locked into a predetermined position guided by GPS. Then, with a device that cost around $1,000 and the help of sophisticated software that took four years to develop, the researchers sent a radio signal from a hilltop one kilometer away. In security lingo, they carried out a spoofing attack.
“We fooled the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) into thinking that it was rising straight up,” says Todd Humphreys, assistant professor at the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas.
Deceiving the drone’s GPS receiver, they changed its perceived coordinates. To compensate, the small copter dove straight down, thinking it was returning to its programmed position. If not for a safety pilot intervening before the drone hit the ground, it would have crashed.
But for Humphreys playing the part of an evil genius in a thriller movie, everything worked exactly to plan. “It was beautiful,” he tells Danger Room.
Since its signals comes from satellites at very high altitude, GPS relies on very weak signals that are extremely vulnerable not only to spoofing attacks but also to jamming – the deliberate or accidental transmission of radio signals that interfere with regular communications.
This weakness has already been exposed in a few incidents in the past. In late 2009, GPS receivers at Newark Airport were going down intermittently every day and no one understood why. It took two months to track down the source of the interference: a driver had installed in his truck an illegal GPS jammer – which can easily be bought online for $50– so that his employer couldn’t track his every move. In 2001, a boat’s television antenna preamplifier took out GPS over the entire harbor town of Moss Landing, just south of San Francisco, for weeks.
