The Global Positioning System and Military Jamming: The geographies of electronic warfare

Westbrook, Tegg

doi:10.5038/1944-0472.12.2.1720

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Focussing on the vulnerabilities of systems and locations, the research involved an analysis of mostly academic research on spoofing as well as white/grey/black hat demonstrations, media reports, and secondary sources from these texts. The objective was to define specific spoofing tactics and strategies, with Trojan and Exposure spoofing being identified as two similar threats requiring further analysis and contextualisation (Westbrook, 2023). The results are expressed by way of a review of real and hypothetical examples of where Trojan and Exposure spoofing have been used.…”

Section: Research Question Methodology and Article Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Iran has proven to be capable of spoofing military drones to enable capture or for the justification for armed confrontation without provoking armed responses. In two known cases of Iran spoofing US drones, on both occasions an armed response was considered at higher levels in the United States (Adde, 2021;Kelley and Cenciotti, 2012;Westbrook, 2019).…”

Section: Trojan Spoofingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There has been an expanse of research dedicated to the weaponisation of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems by non-state actors and their cyber vulnerabilities (for example, Almohammad and Speckhard, 2017;Bhatti et al, 2012;Hoenig, 2014;Huang and Yang, 2015;Jafarnia-Jahromi et al, 2012;Kerns et al, 2014;Sathyamoorthy et al, 2020;Westbrook, 2023). Whilst many drone attacks have created serious causes for concern, cyberattacks against drones have been described as largely inconsequential geopolitically, beyond highlighting state and non-state actor cyber capability, and the consequences for that cyber manipulation, including eavesdropping, surveillance, and reverse engineering of secret military technology (Almohammad and Speckhard, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are very few examples of cyberattacks on drones that have led to military confrontations between adversaries (Almohammad and Speckhard, 2017;Westbrook, 2019). This is due to the fact that the impacts of cyberattacks have been seen as end in themselves, that is, online-to-online attacks; not as means-to-ends, that is, understood from the perspective of the physical manifestations-destruction of property to huge geopolitical consequences-that may result following the specific tactical manipulation of cyber-physical systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trojan spoofing: A threat to critical infrastructure

Westbrook¹

2023

Security and Defence Quarterly

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This article explores the phenomenon of location spoofing—where the spoofer is able to “teleport” systems in and out of defined locations, either for the purpose of infiltration into no-go zones or for the “teleportation” out of real, defined zones in the physical world. The research relied on a qualitative methodology, utilising academic research findings, media reports, hacker demonstrations, and secondary data from these sources, to situate the spoofing threat in the context of international security. This conceptual, argumentative essay finds that signal spoofing, the methods of which can be followed via online scripts, allows users the ability to overcome geographically defined territorial restrictions. This, as this article finds, allows violent actors to weaponise systems, such as unmanned aerial systems, potentially leading to the escalation of political tensions in extreme but unfortunately ever-frequent episodes. The article concludes that, while Trojan spoofing (in particular) poses a real and an existential threat to international security, it is only a sum-of-all parts in considering other threats to critical functions in society. If geofences are used as a single point of security to protect assets against hostile actors, managers need to be aware of the vulnerability of intrusion and the resulting geopolitical consequences.

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Section: Research Question Methodology and Article Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Trojan Spoofingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trojan spoofing: A threat to critical infrastructure

Westbrook¹

2023

Security and Defence Quarterly

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“…It is a very common and highly undesirable real threat. Westbrook (2019) discussed about new geographies of conflict due to the prevailing use of military-grade GPS jamming equipment by both state and non-state actors as an offensive tool of electronic warfare. Owing to the GPS signal being very weak and well below the background RF noise level measured by the receiver ( Silva, 2017 ; Van den Bergh & Pollin, 2019 ), it can be affected by the ionospheric attenuation and other factors such as the path followed by the satellite’s transmissions to the receiver and unlicensed use of the GPS band.…”

Section: Gps Threat Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

On GPS spoofing of aerial platforms: a review of threats, challenges, methodologies, and future research directions

Khan

Mohsin

Iqbal³

2021

PeerJ Computer Science

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Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAVs, Drones), initially known only for their military applications, are getting increasingly popular in the civil sector as well. Over the military canvas, drones have already proven themselves as a potent force multiplier through unmanned, round-the-clock, long-range and high-endurance missions for surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, and even armed combat applications. With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), commercial deployments of drones are also growing exponentially, ranging from cargo and taxi services to agriculture, disaster relief, risk assessment and monitoring of critical infrastructures. Irrespective of the deployment sector, drones are often entrusted to conduct safety, time and liability critical tasks, thus requiring secure, robust and trustworthy operations. In contrast, the rise in UAVs’ demand, coupled with market pressure to reduce size, weight, power and cost (SwaP-C) parameters, has caused vendors to often ignore security aspects, thus inducing serious safety and security threats. As UAVs rely on Global Positioning System (GPS) for positioning and navigation, they can fall prey to GPS jamming and spoofing attacks. The vulnerability of GPS to spoofing has serious implications for UAVs, as victim drones using civil GPS can be misdirected or even completely hijacked for malicious intents, as already demonstrated in several academic research efforts using commercially available GPS spoofing hardware. Beside UAVs, GPS spoofing attacks are equally applicable to other GPS-dependent platforms, including manned aircraft, ground vehicles, and cellular systems. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of GPS spoofing threats, with a special focus on their applicability over UAVs and other GPS-dependent mobile platforms. It presents a novel taxonomy of GPS spoofing attacks and critically analyzes different spoofing techniques based upon placement of spoofing device, attack stealthiness, attack methodologies, and objectives of the attacker. We also discuss some of the recent experiments from open literature which utilized commercially available hardware for successfully conducting spoofing attacks.

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GNSS spoofing detection for UAVs using Doppler frequency and Carrier-to-Noise Density Ratio

Wei,

Sun,

et al. 2024

Journal of Systems Architecture

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The Global Positioning System and Military Jamming: The geographies of electronic warfare

Cited by 12 publications

References 2 publications

Trojan spoofing: A threat to critical infrastructure

Trojan spoofing: A threat to critical infrastructure

On GPS spoofing of aerial platforms: a review of threats, challenges, methodologies, and future research directions

GNSS spoofing detection for UAVs using Doppler frequency and Carrier-to-Noise Density Ratio

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