GPS spoofing, which sends fake satellite-like signals, and GPS jamming, which drowns receivers in noise, are increasingly serious problems. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have created what they say is the most effective system yet for detecting GPS interference, which could help blunt such attacks.
ORNL said Wednesday that a group of boffins led by researcher Austin Albright has developed a new portable device that can detect both spoofing, which sends fake signals that mimic GPS satellite signals to provide bad location data, and jamming, which simply floods GPS receivers with noise. The device can operate from a vehicle to detect attacks on commercial trucks and warn drivers, the lab said, and tests with the US Department of Homeland Security suggest it's sensitive enough to outperform industry-developed systems that already exist.
That sensitivity would be notable enough, but ORNL said that the device is able to do something else that no known GPS interference detector can: It's able to detect spoofing even when fake and real signals are equally strong.
The ORNL device also operates entirely independently of GPS: It doesn't even have a GPS-specific receiver or knowledge of expected GPS signals, according to the lab. Instead, it consists of just a couple of well-known pieces of equipment, namely a software-defined radio and an embedded GPU, and what ORNL said is a new mathematical radio frequency analysis method to separate legit signals from malicious ones. The GPU's role is simply to perform the math in real time to detect spoofs or jams.
"Trucking needs a solution that works without special conditions or dependence on a trusted reference source," Albright said of the new device in ORNL's writeup. "Ours is the best in the world."
With the successful testing of the device completed, Albright and his team are now looking at ways to make the thing cheaper to produce, which we can imagine might include replacing the GPU with something less in-demand by the AI industry.
GPS spam: Not just a problem for planes
We've reported plenty on GPS spoofing and jamming at The Register, but most of our writing on the topic has focused on aviation, with issues like GPS spoofing rampant at multiple airports in India, disrupting a flight carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and generally rising to the level of being a serious flight safety concern for aviators around the world.
ORNL acknowledged the problem of GPS interference in aviation in its writeup, and while the device could potentially help detect attacks against aircraft, the lab’s immediate focus appears to be protecting truckers moving goods across the US.
As an example, ORNL pointed to an incident last year in which two tractor-trailer loads of tequila from a brand co-founded by celebrity chef and Flavortown mayor Guy Fieri and former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar were stolen. GPS spoofing was used during the crime to keep those waiting for the estimated 24,000 bottles from getting suspicious that the trucks weren't on course.
Some of the booze was eventually recovered in California (it was supposed to be delivered to Pennsylvania), but not before Fieri said the company had to lay people off due to the losses.
- GPS on the fritz? Britain and France plot a backup plan
- DHS warns of sharp rise in Chinese-made signal jammers it calls 'tools of terrorism'
- Boffins explore cell signals as potential GPS alternative
- Texas students hijack superyacht with GPS-spoofing luggage
While stolen tequila is bad, the same attacks could also be used to waylay or misdirect shipments carrying everything from personal packages to nuclear materials and other essential goods.
"Everyone uses cargo monitoring with GPS tracking, whether for your personal packages, your pizza, or nuclear materials," Albright said, adding that the device would act like any other sort of alarm to alert a driver that something's amiss.
"Like a carbon monoxide alarm alerts you to an invisible danger, spoofing detection is critical to alerting us to a new invisible danger," Albright said. Drivers with one of the ORNL devices, for example, could get an alert, "know something bad is happening and call someone," potentially protecting the driver, their shipment, and people who would be harmed by its loss.
We reached out to ORNL to learn more about the future of the project, but the lab wasn't able to meet our deadline. ®