RISKS AND THREATS OF GPS JAMMING

• Technology
• February 25, 2019
• 1 Comment
• Dr K Jayanth Murali admin

On a fine afternoon in San Diego, California. Things suddenly began to go amiss. Air-traffic controllers at the airport tower, stared at  their monitors only to discover that the systems for monitoring approaching planes had become abruptly dysfunctional.

At the Naval Medical Centre , emergency pagers used for convoking doctors quickly ceased working. At the busy harbour, the traffic management system for channelling boats, conked out unexpectedly, causing utter chaos to prevail.

On the streets, people reaching for their cellphones discovered to their chagrin, that they had no signal and bank customers trying to withdraw cash from local ATMs were denied money. The status quo persisted for about 2 hours during the incident on January 22, 2007.

Three days later when the cause behind the Delphian situation was gone into, it became revealed that two navy ships in the San Diego harbour while conducting training exercises to test communication procedures, had inadvertently, jammed radio signals from GPS satellites causing global positioning system outage on the seafront and downtown San Diego.

Quite similarly, in London a delivery boy in a vehicle  with a turned on jammer decided to take a breather by parking it next to a stock exchange for ten minutes. During those ten minutes, the traders, to their consternation, found the trades not going through due to a problem with the time-stamping mechanism . Leaving the bewildered exchange personnel, wondering if the exchange had come under a cyber assault from an enemy.

GPS jammers work by broadcasting noise on the same frequencies used by the satellites, so that receivers can’t pick up the signals. Depending on the broadcasting strength of the jammer, it can knock out GPS reception for a few metres or for kms.

The GPS can be jammed by masking the GPS satellite signal with broadcasting noise on the same frequencies used by the satellites, so that receivers can’t pick up the signals. GPS receivers sound an alarm when they lose the signal due to jamming.

Spoofing on the other hand, which we discussed in my previous write-up, is wily. A fake signal from a ground station throws a satellite receiver into confusion.
Consultant David Last, former president of the UK’s Royal Institute of Navigation made a clear distinction between jamming and spoofing. According to him – “Jamming just causes the receiver to die, while spoofing causes the receiver to lie,”

There is a common misconception, that a military GPS receiver is immune to jamming. “Signals from satellites are so feeble that even a one-watt to 10-watt jammer can deny GPS coverage for a large area.

Drivers around the world have started to rely totally on the GPS. They  seem to have forsaken paper maps . The transport companies,courier firms, police departments, taxi companies, bank escorts etc. are using GPS to track their vehicles, know locations and manage operations.

The drivers of most GPS fitted vehicles resent being tracked as it gives them a feeling of being under constant supervision .In order to overcome that feeling, the employees initially started to react to it by resorting to temporary disconnection of devices or even total removal of them.
Of late, they have discovered GPS jammers which provides them with the same subterfuge at a cost as low as ₹1000 . Not only is it extremely effective, but it also does not leave behind any shred of evidence of having temporarily sabotaged the installed GPS device .
There is however one major disadvantage . The effect and impact of the jammer does not confine itself to just the vehicle in which it is installed but the radius of the impact extends up to 500 feet around it.
Therefore,  every lorry driver who is trying to hoodwink his owner with a jammer is in the process disrupting the GPS signals of several vehicles in his vicinity.

Police all over the world while tracking stolen vehicles are finding them vanish from their radars as soon as the thieves activate their GPS jammers.
An organised gang in the UK successfully used GPS jammers to rob 40 tractor trailers carrying cargo worth $10 million.

If a small jammer can cause so much havoc imagine the kind of chaos large commercial jammers available on the internet could unleash if one or two of these devices are spread out strategically in Metropolitan cities by terrorists.
The threat to the security of our cities and  countries is gargantuan due to the easy and increasing availability of such jammers.

During the last few years, planes have been increasingly using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology. This technology is being deployed in place of conventional radio navigation aids, and air-to-ground-based and inertial navigation systems.
The signals being used by GPS satellites can be jammed either wittingly by a military exercise or malevolently by a person with ill-intent or even unwittingly by a truck driver trying to jam his employer’s GPS. 
At the airport in the French City of Nantes, the ground-based augmentation systems(GBAS) which aids aircraft take off and land got abruptly conked out without any detectable mechanical cause.
The puzzle was solved when an airport technician found a car in the parking lot with a GPS jammer turned on. The owner of the vehicle who had boarded an international flight had forgotten to switch it off before boarding the flight.

Similarly, the Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey, USA, went for a GPS enabled landing system to facilitate landing of aircraft in poor visibility conditions. Air traffic controllers were bewildered when the system started to shut down a couple of times every day.
Much later, after several months the conundrum got demystified when they found that the disruption was being caused by a truck driver on New Jersey Turnpike.
He was turning on his portable GPS jammers to avoid paying tolls and in the process, crippling the screens of the air traffic control.

Between 2013 and mid-2016, there were almost 80 incidents of aircraft GPS signal jamming or dysfunctions, according to those filed on NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS).
Pilots flying aircraft ranging from Cessna 172s to Airbus A300s have been reporting these incidents, and the episodes were not limited to the U.S. Other more high-profile events around the globe also highlight the problem.

The jammers which civilians can lay their hands on are weak when compared to the jammers available with the armies. Armed forces everywhere practice disrupting their adversaries’ navigation.
It’s no surprise that Russia is hellbent on testing NATO’s capabilities and has been doing so repeatedly.

Disruption of GPS allegedly by Russia, was first seen in September 2017 during Russia’s Zapad military drills near the Baltic states.
This occurred again in October during NATO’s Trident Juncture exercise, held in Norway between Oct and Nov 2018. GPS signals across far northern Norway and Finland failed. Civilian aeroplanes were forced to navigate manually, and ordinary citizens could no longer trust their smartphones.
Oslo openly alleged that Russian forces on the Arctic Kola peninsula were behind the GPS interference despite Moscow denying any involvement.

Syria has become some playground for Russia to showcase its electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. Russia appears to have gained the upper hand as US planes are coming under significant disablement under Russian attack.
Russian jamming and electronic warfare capabilities have had an undeniable impact on small surveillance drones, which the US authorities have not only accepted but admitted it as well .
The Russian military has been able to develop technology to overcome and overpower, the hard to get into drone’s control systems and break open the anti-jam technology, by decrypting the encrypted GPS .
The killer capabilities of Russians to jam in a multitude of frequencies for hundreds of kilometres has become very well-known. The Russians also appear to have gained good knowledge about the vulnerabilities of their enemies.
Compass Call is supposed to be one of America’s foremost electronic warfare weapons, but the EC-130s over Syria are being attacked and disabled. The Russian attacks are reported to have a targeted an EC-130’s Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) or communications.
“America’s EC-130 is designed for electronic warfare and is intended to destabilise enemy communications, radars, and command and control communications, as well as suppress air defences.

North Korea has frequently been resorting to GPS jamming of South Korean GPS signals. The most extended GPS attack carried out by the North occurred in early 2012 which went on for 16 days, disrupting 1,106 aircraft and 254 ships. North Korea in March last year, jammed 962 planes and 700 fishing vessels.

GPS jamming is an increasing worldwide problem. The first and best step to take is to pursue technologies that can detect and locate GPS jammers.
Technology is now available that detects sources of intentional and unintentional interference to GPS signals and provides actionable intelligence.
This solution enables 3D geolocation of interference sources and provides visualisation tools to support timely and effective action in GPS denied and contested environments.
Sensors can be strategically located around high-risk areas, such as marine ports or utility grids, to instantaneously sense and triangulate the location of jamming sources. Should a threat be detected, it would also be possible for users to receive pin- point geolocation information in order to respond.

The receivers of our spiritual GPS(God’s positioning system) has been perfectly designed to help us navigate to a life of spiritual bliss and unalloyed joy.
Instead of attuning our receiver to spiritual frequencies of silence and contemplation we are today jamming our consciousness with a deluge of worldly noise, such as TV, binge drinking,eating, social media,nightclubs,friends, pleasure, possessions, power etc – but as long as our inner GPS is jammed with unbridled worldly noise we will always lack peace of mind and true happiness.

Source from: epaper/deccanchronicle/chennai/dt:25.02.2019

Dr.K. Jayanth Murali is an IPS Officer belonging to 1991 batch. He is borne on Tamil Nadu cadre. He lives with his family in Chennai, India. He is currently serving the Government of Tamil Nadu as Additional Director General of Police, DVAC.