GPS software attacks

Since its creation, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has grown from a limited purpose positioning system to a ubiquitous trusted source for positioning, navigation, and timing data. To date, researchers have essentially taken a signal processing approach to GPS security and shown that GPS is vulnerable to jamming and spoofing.

In this work, we systematically map out a larger attack surface by viewing GPS as a computer system. Our surface includes higher level GPS protocol messages than previous work, as well as the GPS OS and downstream dependent systems. We develop a new hardware platform for GPS attacks, and develop novel attacks against GPS infrastructure. Our experiments on consumer and professional-grade receivers show that GPS and GPS-dependent systems are significantly more vulnerable than previously thought. For example, we show that remote attacks via malicious GPS broadcasts are capable of bringing down up to 30% and 20% of the global CORS navigation and NTRIP networks, respectively, using hardware that costs about the same as a laptop. In order to improve security, we propose systems-level defenses and principles that can be deployed to secure critical GPS and dependent systems.