In June, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin successfully coerced an $80 million, 213-foot yacht off its course using a custom-made GPS device.
The team did so by using the first-ever openly acknowledged GPS spoofing device. Spoofing is a technique that creates false civil GPS signals to gain control of a vessel’s GPS receivers. From the super yacht's upper deck, the researchers broadcasted a faint ensemble of civil GPS signals from their spoofing device - a blue box about the size of a briefcase - toward the ship’s two GPS antennas. The team’s counterfeit signals slowly overpowered the authentic GPS signals until they ultimately obtained control of the ship’s navigation system.
The researchers hope their demonstration will shed light on the perils of navigation attacks, serving as evidence that spoofing is a serious threat to marine vessels and other semi-autonomous vehicles such as aircraft.
(University of Texas at Austin)
Transcript
00:00:07 off the southern coast of Italy in June 2013 a 65m super yacht and her crew were part of an unprecedented experiment led by the University of Texas at Austin that successfully coerced The Vessel off course using a custommade GPS spoofing device 30 mi from Land the crew sense of the ship's location is based entirely on civil GPS signals broadcast from orbiting satellites a UT
00:00:36 student serving as the attacker commands the spoofing device to transmit faint counterfeit signals towards the ship's antennas the attacker increases the power of the spoofing signals until they are stronger than the satellite signals gaining control of the ship's navigation system the Takeover is stealthy no alarms are triggered once in control the attacker in iniates a 3° change to the
00:01:02 ship's course the ship's navigation system reports that the vessel is drifting slowly to the left the false location is represented here by the Ghost Ship the crew applies a course correction to bring the Ghost Ship back onto the intended path in reality the ship is now on the attacker's course
