For one of the most famous politicians in the world, identity theft does not seem to be an unreasonable preventive measure. In August 2018, the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's speech was briefly interrupted when a pair of drones exploded on the main road in Caracas. A few days later, agents of the French Secret Service destroyed a mysterious drone that was too close to the summer residence of French President Emmanuel Macron. But for those who died as a result of identity thefts-captains confused at sea, passengers overloaded in Moscow-it is difficult to accept the guaranty heads of state they only provide to protect themselves.
Humphreys served as a writer and consultant for C4ADS research, and he felt that the invasion of the Black Sea was more extensive than the report revealed. To test his intuition, he searched for data from the International Space Station, which collects GPS signals in the high-altitude atmosphere. Orbiting the earth, this will give Humphries a direct view of the Black Sea. He obtained data from three different orbits in 2018, and he sat down to study that winter when he sat on vacation in his wife's hometown in the Canary Islands that winter.
Unlike the noisy surface of planets rich in radio signals, the upper atmosphere is a calm area where interference frequencies are interrupted; Humphries can immediately detect data interference from the Black Sea. Where does the ghost signal come from? Humphries knew that when the space station passed overhead, the spoofed signal would produce a Doppler effect. This is a simple clue that most city dwellers are familiar with: Imagine driving to a crime scene. You can hear the sirens and the megaphone, but you can't see it. Because of the sudden increase in the height of these environmental noises, you will know when you approach. Likewise, the Humphreys can use the changes in the spoofer signal to start guessing where he comes from. When calculating the numbers, he provided two possible locations: a forest in Romania and somewhere in Syria. He recalculated using data recorded from another space station, and this time concluded that the signal came from the German campaign or from Syria. After Hemphreys verified the exact location, the two sets of Syrian coordinates were the same: Khmeimim Air Force Base, which is a location on the coast related to Russian military activities in the country. Further calculations reduce the GPS Jammers to the transmitter in the northwest quadrant of the base station. Another recording from the space station, this time the conclusion is that the signal came from rural Germany or from Syria. After Hemphreys verified the exact location, the two sets of Syrian coordinates were the same: Khmeimim Air Force Base, which is a location on the coast related to Russian military activities in the country. Further calculations reduce the source of interference to the transmitter in the northwest quadrant of the base station. Another recording from the space station, this time the conclusion is that the signal came from rural Germany or from Syria. After Hemphreys verified the exact location, the two sets of Syrian coordinates were the same: Khmeimim Air Force Base, which is a location on the coast related to Russian military activities in the country. Further calculations reduce the source of interference to the transmitter in the northwest quadrant of the base station.
The ghost signal that Humphries discovered was different from anything he had seen before, combining elements of interference and deception. Like jammers, these signals do not transmit actual coordinates. But they are more than just noise-like identity theft, they convince the receiver to recognize a false GPS signal. Humphreys called it a "smart jammer" and regarded it as the new frontier in the GPS signal war. If the real signal is a light bulb thousands of miles away, then the fake Syriac is a high-performance projector that can satisfy your vision and blind everything.
The signal strength of a commercial airliner flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet above the jammer is 10 billion times stronger than the real GPS signal. Even for an aircraft that is just above the horizon, whose line of sight is the farthest from the transmitter, the signal from the smart jammer will be 500 times stronger than the real jammer.
What Humphries discovered from Khmeimim is the GPS jammer device to date. Humphries said: "This is the most Powerful example of jammers I have ever seen." "I call this my Jack Ryan moment." In January 2018, the Air Force base was hit by a group of 13 armed with explosives. A drone attack. Somehow, this attack was prevented. Humphreys speculated that a clever jammer used anti-aircraft ammunition to repel the attack.
Global Positioning System. Jammers may become a way for American enemies to fight in conflicts that they usually cannot win. The civilian use of GPS has long surpassed military use, but GPS is still almost a part of all weapons systems in the United States. Humphreys said: "It is exactly what we mean to face serious opponents in electronic warfare." "I think Russia has not shown all the cards."
In July last year, the captain of a container ship registered in the United States noticed that his navigation system was strange when he entered the Shanghai port. GPS places the ship several kilometers inland. When Humphreys and C4ADS heard about this, they suspected it was an isolated incident. Humphreys said: "We looked at more data, and frankly, we saw the same phenomenon appearing near the Chinese coastline." On the same day, another 300 ships in Shanghai were targeted for identity theft. Thousands of ships have become the target of identity theft. What is unusual about Shanghai's occupation is that the ship is not "transported" to the same wrong location, and all reported coordinates are different. Further analysis conducted by Bjorn Bergman of the SkyTruth Watchdogs organization shows that similar trends are occurring in 20 other places in China.
Hemphreys admitted that he was not sure what was behind this new method of identity theft-or behind it. Some speculate that oil smugglers and thieves can use technology to sneak into ports more or less. Bergman suggested that the Chinese government participate in identity theft. Humphreys said that this pattern is very common, and he certainly knows this kind of activity. The person in charge is not particularly careful, and may not care about being discovered. Humphries said: "It looks like they really sent a junior college team to participate in this game."
But are you motivated to work hard? Now, the Humphreys software-defined scooters found on White Sands are easier to obtain; you don’t need to be a mastermind to successfully carry out an identity theft attack. The trouble that amateurs are prone to cause serious interference should make us worry about the capabilities of experts. Humphries predicts that the next major imitation attack will target GPS-enabled clocks-possibly from state or non-state actors.
Humphreys said to me: "We already generally think that GPS is great, but we need to get rid of habits." The accuracy of the features of the system seems to be replaced by fuzzy and chaotic chaos. But what would a viable alternative look like? Overall, GPS is still a very Powerful system. Its main weakness is the weakness of the signal itself. One solution is to use a satellite closer to us to reconstruct the system with a stronger signal. But this change will require more satellites to provide global coverage: 700 satellites compared to the current benchmark 24 satellites. "Governmental control of GPS has truly benefited all mankind because it is not
As far as we know, we may be witnessing the first phase of GPS death. For many years, GPS has been the only comprehensive global satellite navigation system in the world. Its only real competitor is Russia's glonass, which ranks far behind. Today, China has implemented the Beidou satellite system, and the EU is developing another system, Galileo. However, the operating principles of these systems are similar to GPS and have the same vulnerabilities.
The answer may be some kind of public-private partnership. Humphreys predicts that companies that maintain hundreds of low-Earth orbit networks (such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Amazon's Project Kuiper) will eventually become the GPS ecosystem The key part of the failure or attack. We know that the new system will be like GPS-with one exception. Humphries said: "There is no doubt that this will be a paid service." "But it may be a decent insurance policy."
