1 big thing: How Russia tampers with GPS |
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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Satellite navigation systems like the Global Positioning System (GPS)
make so many different pieces of our global infrastructure tick that
most countries treat their signals as sacrosanct, knowing that
interfering with them could have devastating effects. But a new report released Tuesday is giving us the first broad view of a country — Russia — that's pervasively tampering with the service. The big picture: Global
navigation satellites — including GPS and less-used competing services
like Russia's GLONASS — are coordinated networks of atomic clocks in
outer space that can be used to triangulate precise locations or
coordinate precise timing. Without them, everything from global shipping
to financial markets would suffer. Why it matters: It's
easy to see the military, transportation and pizza delivery importance
of precise location information. The timing signals are extremely
important, too.
The intrigue: Russia
has been called out several times before for interfering with global
positioning satellite systems, and it is known to capitalize on
interfering with GPS for military and national security purposes like no
other country. But before the study by the C4ADS think tank, no one had really taken a scientific look across all of
Russia's activities to see how constant the disruptions are.
C4ADS is not formally accusing the
Russian government of being behind any of the fraudulent, "spoofed"
signals. It would be impossible to make that kind of determination from
the space station. But, but, but: It is clear that many of the instances largely serve Russian national interests.
Why airports? Many
manufacturers of drones use GPS chips to prevent their products from
flying into airport airspace. C4ADS suspects the spoofing was to prevent
drone attacks or surveillance. Meanwhile, Russia also used spoofing in combat zones, particularly Syria, to try to limit attacks against its installations. Go deeper: Read more, including how Moscow uses GPS hacking in battle. |