GPS spoofing countermeasures: Your smartphone already has them There's suddenly a lot of panic about GPS satellite navigation spoofing, and BAE Systems among others would like to sell the military some tech to resist it. But in fact, most modern smartphones already have strong countermeasures against this sort of thing. UK-headquartered but largely US-based BAE's latest grab for …
Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a guidance kits, which have been around for about 20 years already are GPS spoofing-proof. JDAM kits contain an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. Inertial guidance systems cannot be jammed, although they do suffer from integration errors. Other military munition "GPS" systems are also inertial + GPS.
Thing is, I *can* and have killed food with hand-knapped obsidian blades. I have a log cabin (built by my Great Grandfather in 1890ish, added onto by me twenty years ago using the same techniques). The wife & I teach a "shearing to socks and shirts" class twice a year.
In reality, I use a humane killer on my livestock, the log cabin is our "get the fuck out of reality" space, and I purchase most of my clothing at Sears. I do grow nearly all the vegetables we use here at the Ranch, though.
The difference between you and me is that I not only know how it's done, but I can, and actually do it ... and teach how, for people interested. There is no "ap" that substitutes for getting your fingers dirty.
Only problem is paper maps have this annoying tendency to grow more inaccurate as time passes. Oh, because roads get built, demolished, resurfaced, restructured. Many a driver has gotten lost because the T-intersection they were supposed to find is now a four-way because the road got extended. Or because the map says take the first on-ramp, not realizing a new onramp was just added in front of that one--going THE OTHER WAY.
The desk phone at my elbow is an early 1950s Western Electric rotary-dial telephone. It was the first telephone my Father ever payed the lease on. It still makes and receives telephone calls, even during power failures, which is all I want a telephone to do. Hopefully $TELCO won't kill pulse-dialing on land-lines any time soon ...
But you seem to have an issue with single-tasking tools, AC. Care to explain why?
I'm not sure if you've actually read enough articles on here to realise Jake but The Register is a Tech Publication. That means they write about and attract people interested in technology. It is not an antiquated contraptions and ranching publication. Yet, almost every post you make has to reference one or the other.
Do you go on to the BMW owners forums and tell them how great your bicycle is and how rubbish their cars are?
The article in question isn't even about smart phones, except as a reference to the fact they the already perform a function which BAE is trying to lever into the military market. Yet still you jump on here "bragging" about owning an old nokia. Who cares? Its not even relevant to the discussion.
You don't think that producing food & clothing is technology? The mind boggles.
I'm not bragging about the old Nokia. I'm just pointing out that it does exactly what I expect a telephone to do, which is place and receive telephone calls.
As a side-note, mr/s techno-buff, I'm "jake", not "Jake". Computers tend to be literal.
So, AC 09:50 ... Which AC are you, exactly? Some AC or another mentioned food & clothing ... which are technology, regardless. You're not that AC? OK ... Maybe create a handle that the rest of us can actually get a grasp of who you are and reply to on a one on one basis?
Remember, I'm "jake", not "Jake" ... Might be hard to grok, but think about it.
My point is that you would probably have a boat-load more cash in your jeans if you had ever taken a simple "navigation 101" course.
The only time I use electronics for navigation is in the air, and on open water. On the road, it's hardly useful, much less necessary. I can't remember the last time I was more than a street or two off course.
They could have easily got it from you.
Have you ever had your wifi and GPS turned on at the same time?
Did you check the option to say you're willing to share the wifi positional data is acquires with google? (You can change your mind by going into location settings and unchecking the "use wireless networks" and then checking it again. It asks for confirmation each time).
Then again, even if you didn't, someone else walking past (doesn't have to be a streetview car) could easily have been.
It's actually a useful feature. It allows the device to locate your initial (vague) position very very quickly. A cold start on GPS can take half a minute or so without it, which is a damn long time when you're sat at the front of a queue of traffic trying to work out where you are.
In the hope of avoiding unnecessary concern, Apple and Google (and probably others) are taking the MAC address and the location details and associating the two. As a WLAN AP will always broadcast it's MAC address, ACL's and setting the "hidden" bit won't stop these details appearing unless you turn off the radio or AP.
They may well be adding SSID information, but I would hope they filtered this to just agreed providers.
There are more BAe Systems employees in the US than in the UK.
There is more BAe Systems revenue in the US than in the UK.
You can check this in any Annual Report for the last few years.
Plus whenever I visited sites like Warton, the "UK employees" always included significant numbers of US citizens "temporarily" working in the UK.
All in all, I think that makes them not very British.
I wouldn't trust what the Iranians have to say any more than I'd trust what the US says back.
From what the Iranians have said so far, they could have gained the same information from shooting down a drone or waiting for a drone to fail by some other means and salvaging its equivalent of a black box from the wreckage and cobbling together a basic model of its airframe out of plywood and larger bits of debris.
The Iranians displayed a complete, undamaged drone, explained how they brought it down, and revealed other bits of on-board info including mission data, past service history etc to prove their point. And tellingly, the US has not denied that what the Iranians say is plausible/possible.
The simplest conclusion, therefore, is that they did, indeed, bring it down as they say. Any other explanation is currently not as likely. Remember this is a nation on the brink of independently developing nuclear weapons, with a very high level of technological expertise. It's worth taking what they say very seriously.
Two conclusions:
1. Whether or not it's possible to encrypt GPS usage so that it cannot be spoofed, the current US attack drones don't do so.
2. On-board data stored in the drone's computers is obviously not adequately encrypted.
Neither of these conclusions are surprising, since the whole point of drones is that they can be developed and deployed quickly and cheaply. But I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a fast scramble in the US to sort out their encryption.
The simplest conclusion, therefore, is that they did, indeed, bring it down as they say. Any other explanation is currently not as likely
maybe they just bought one....
I bought an accessory for my motorcycle, in HongKong, that set me back the equivalent of 29 pounds whixh jams all cell and GPS frequencies including 3G.
It's small enough to fit in my under-seat storage and the antennae are fairly inconspicuous.
In the city the range is approximately just over a 100 metres (tested against cells and a GPS receiver). In the open country/highways things get much better. As our CGST (highway police) use speed traps with GPS attached and speed checking is far shorter distanced with a plastic bodied motorcycle/motorscooter, than a huge blob of steel in the form of a car or truck (lorry). Without GPS readings the courts will not accept speeding tickets. The GPS reading is on the picture along with the time, date, compass direction and speed.
I suspect BAE's wet dream could be as easily defeated.
"I bought an accessory for my motorcycle, in HongKong, that set me back the equivalent of 29 pounds whixh jams all cell and GPS frequencies including 3G."
So you're saying that when you have an accident and you - or somebody else - is lying in the road, unconscious and bleeding to death, nobody can call the emergency services? And all so that you can roar through speed cameras above the legal limit, most likely causing the aforementioned accident? Moron. You don't deserve an ambulance.
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