'Time Hacking' GPS Spoofers Target Commercial Airlines, According To Researchers.
According to cybersecurity researchers, a recent spike in GPS “spoofing,” a type of digital attack that may send commercial airliners off course, has taken on an exciting new dimension. The power to manipulate time.
According to aviation consulting group OPSGROUP, GPS spoofing incidents involving commercial airliners have increased by 400% in recent months. Many of these events involve illegal ground-based GPS systems, particularly in conflict zones, that broadcast erroneous positions into the surrounding area in order to confuse incoming drones or missiles.
“We think too much about GPS being a source of position, but it’s actually a source of time,” said Ken Munro, founder of Pen Test Partners, a British cybersecurity business, during a presentation on Saturday at the DEF CON hacking convention in Las Vegas.
“We’re starting to see reports of the clocks on board airplanes during spoofing events starting to do weird things.”
In an interview with Reuters, Munro described a recent event in which an aircraft operated by a prominent Western airline had its onboard clocks unexpectedly pushed ahead by years, leading the plane to lose access to its digitally secured communication systems.
The plane was grounded for weeks while experts manually reset its onboard systems, Munro explained. He refuses to name the airline or aircraft in question.
In April, Finnair temporarily halted flights to Tartu, eastern Estonia, due to GPS spoofing, which Tallin blamed on neighboring Russia.
GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System, has mostly replaced expensive ground systems that send radio beams to direct planes to land. However, it is quite simple to block or distort GPS signals with inexpensive and readily available hardware and a minimum technological understanding.
“Is it going to cause a plane crash?” Munro told Reuters, “No, it is not.”
“What it does is cause a little misunderstanding. And you run the risk of triggering what we call a cascade of events, in which something little happens, followed by something minor, and then something major.”