Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have found that Israeli air bases are the main source of GPS attacks that have disrupted civilian aviation navigation in the Middle East.
This type of attack is called a spoofing attack. Sending manipulated GPS signals This caused the aircraft’s instruments to misread its position.
Researchers Todd Humphreys and Zach Clements said they were “highly confident” the spoofing attacks originated from Ein Shemer Airfield in northern Israel. The Israeli military declined to comment on Tuesday.
The researchers used data transmitted by the spoofer and received by low-Earth orbit satellites to determine its location. They then confirmed their calculations using data collected on the ground in Israel.
Spoofing and GPS jamming have increased dramatically over the past three years, particularly in Ukraine and around the Gaza war zone, where militaries have jammed navigation signals to thwart missile and drone attacks.
The Middle East has become a hotspot for spoofing attacks. The University of Texas researchers did not say how many spoofing attacks were linked to the military base, but another analysis estimated that more than 50,000 flights in the region have been spoofed this year.
Researchers from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences said the strikes led pilots to believe they were over Beirut or Cairo airports, when in fact they were not. Who analyzed the data? From OpenSky Network.
Swiss International Air Lines says its flights are spoofed on an almost daily basis in the Middle East.
In addition, Estonia and other Baltic states have accused Russia of jamming signals in their airspace. In April, Finnair rejected two flights and suspended flights to Estonian airports due to severe GPS interference.
Today, attacks cover large swaths of the globe far from battlefields.
In addition to causing navigational confusion, spoofing can trigger false alarms that planes are too close to the ground. But the attacks have not yet made flying dangerous because pilots can use other navigation methods.
“Losing GPS isn’t going to cause planes to fall out of the sky,” said Jeremy Benington, vice president of Spirent Communications, which provides testing for global navigation systems. “But I also don’t want to discount the fact that we are removing a layer of safety.”
