Story ID: 
NBAA Webinar Addresses GPS Spoofing Vulnerabilities
By: Sarah Rose
Caption: Spoofing not confined to Middle East or Ukraine
Word Count: 292
Spoofing has exposed the vulnerabilities of using GPS as the sole primary navigation source for aircraft, according to a recent NBAA News Hour webinar. In a GPS spoofing attack, a counterfeit radio signal is transmitted to a receiver antenna to counteract and override a legitimate GPS satellite, causing navigation errors.
“The bottom line is, GPS satellites are 12,000 miles up in the sky while a GPS spoofer can be just 10 miles away from the airplane,” said David Woodcock, principal applications engineer for customer and product support for Honeywell Aerospace. “The RF signals you receive from satellites are a lot weaker than what’s on the ground.”
GPS spoofing which is not confined to active conflict areas in the Middle East or Ukraine. Presenters have cited spoofing experiences near Beijing, and over Myanmar and India.
“This poses a significant impact not only on navigation [but also] other systems that will latch onto bad information,” added Nat Iyengar, NBAA International Operators Committee chair and captain with Jet Aviation Business Jets. Crews may experience erroneous EGPWS (enhanced ground proximity warning system) alerts, for example, or false in-flight weather data.
Webinar presenters referred to an OpsGroup report that said the future of GPS in aviation is unclear. According to this report, an Ops Group workgroup "assessed that the vulnerabilities in public-use GPS that are now becoming evident (although known to experts for a decade or more) mean that the high involvement of GPS in aircraft systems is a major issue.”
“Further, the over-reliance on GPS for primary navigation places great importance on preserving a sufficient network of conventional ground-based navaids. This aspect of the issue requires deeper study and conversation.”