Friday, June 29, 2012

Researchers Accomplish GPS Spoofing of Domestic UAS

It appears the theory that the Iranians used GPS spoofing techniques to crash and acquire a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel UAS (Rawnsley, 2011), just recieved some additional support. A team of students from the University of Texas Austin, with the cooperation of the Department of Homeland Security, succesfully gained control of a small rotocraft UAS (Lecher, 2012) using spoofing. This coordination between researchers and the Government exposes an operational design flaw that will need to be resolved before the widespread integration of UAS into the domestic airspace.

Update 30 June 2012: BAE has announced the development of a new navigation system, navigation via signals of opportunity (NAVSOP) radio positioning to supplement existing GPS and mitigate potential spoofing efforts (Holloway, 2012). NAVSOP will rely on existing radio infrastructure and be usable in locations where GPS currently cannot (i.e., polar Earth positions and inside buildings; Holloway, 2012).

Update 6 July 2012:This experiment is the first proof that UAS can be spoofed to change their position using automated reaction (Franceschi-Bicchierai, 2012).

REFERENCES
Holloway, J. (2012, June). BAE takes on GPS with NAVSOP radio positioning system. Gizmag.com. Retrieved from http://www.gizmag.com/bae-navsop-radio-positioning/23137/

Franceschi-Bicchierai, L. (2012, July). Drone hijacking? That's just the start of GPS troubles. Popular Science. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/drone-hijacking/

Lecher, C. (2012, June). Texas students hijack a U.S. Government drone in midair. Popular Science. Retrieved from http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/researchers-hack-government-drone-1000-parts

Rawnsley, A. (2011, December). Iran's alleged drone hack: Tough, but possible. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/iran-drone-hack-gps/

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