Security News > 2021 > February > GPS Vulnerabilities

Really good op-ed in the New York Times about how vulnerable the GPS system is to interference, spoofing, and jamming - and potential alternatives.

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act included funding for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation to jointly conduct demonstrations of various alternatives to GPS, which were concluded last March.

Eleven potential systems were tested, including eLoran, a low-frequency, high-power timing and navigation system transmitted from terrestrial towers at Coast Guard facilities throughout the United States.

"China, Russia, Iran, South Korea and Saudi Arabia all have eLoran systems because they don't want to be as vulnerable as we are to disruptions of signals from space," said Dana Goward, the president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for the implementation of an eLoran backup for GPS. Also under consideration by federal authorities are timing systems delivered via fiber optic network and satellite systems in a lower orbit than GPS, which therefore have a stronger signal, making them harder to hack.

A report on the technologies was submitted to Congress last week.

GPS is a piece of our critical infrastructure that is essential to a lot of the rest of our critical infrastructure.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/02/gps-vulnerabilities.html