Comment on Commercial Flights Are Experiencing 'Unthinkable' GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do

• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Would that be relevant for a drone attack? I wouldn’t think a drone that isn’t operated by a state actor is likely to be moving that fast, and presumably a state actor could build their own chips without a limiter?

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  • billiam0202@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thus the point of the spoofing. A drone will be moving much slower than 300 m/s, so spoofing GPS would be an attempt to force it off-course.

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    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ah, I see, I misunderstood what you meant

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• shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Are you meaning 300 measurements per second? Because civilian gps has an accuracy of ~3 meters. I may be misunderstanding though

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  • ironeagl@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The GPS chips have internal limits on how fast they think they can move. If they determine that they are moving faster than 300m/s they will stop outputting any results for a period of time. This limit is, IIRC, put in at the silicon level, so only military chips can bypass it.

    If you try to use mapping apps on a plane you sometimes run into this issue.

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    • sanmarzano@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It is trivial to make your GPS receiver firmware ignore these limits. There are even open-source receivers (SwiftNav piksi, for example). Modifying a binary is much harder, but not impossible for a motivated state like Iran or Russia. It’s best to think of the COCOM limits as suggestions.

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    • EarMaster@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      But even the fastest airliners at the moment (A330 neo) moves slower than 300m/s. Wikipedia claims that COCOM limits are even higher so I don’t think that they are the reason for the inaccurate tracking on planes.

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      • TheGuardianWolf@lemmy.pixelcollider.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        There’s also a height limit

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      • ironeagl@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Turns out it’s 1000 knots (~600m/s), or 18,000 feet. So it’s the altitude in this case. But a slow-moving drone at <18,000ft is fine.

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      • ironeagl@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Maybe a misapplication then. I’ve run into it with model rocketry before (for good reason)

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    • shortwavesurfer@monero.town ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh, neat. I was not aware of that. I have seen that before but thought it was due to the phone not being able to lock on to the signal from inside a big metal tube.

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