Defense Contractor To Launch New GPS Security Technology

Everybody knows about the Global Positioning System (GPS), a ubiquitous, free utility which we rely on everyday. We use it to find directions on our road trips, or to move through the maze of city streets. Airplanes use it to navigate our crowded skies. But, as most people don’t know, it also provides timing information. And that’s used to control the power grid and banking operations. It’s a system that has become part of our life and whose security we never worry about. Experts call it a stealth utility: we don’t even think about it until something goes wrong.

After researchers at Texas University hijacked a drone fooling its GPS receiver, feeding it wrong coordinates, experts warned that the spoofing demonstration was just the tip of the iceberg of GPS troubles. As it turns out, GPS signals are unencrypted and open, making them easy preys for hackers. But that’s not the only danger. GPS jammers, or personal privacy devices, can also disrupt the system’s signals. Jammers are small, cheap and portable devices that interfere with GPS satellites and can potentially take out GPS for several miles.

Selling, distributing, importing and even advertising these kind of gizmos is illegal and can lead to fines of more than $100,000. Even though this means you can’t buy one on eBay anymore, you can still find plenty of websites that sell them overseas and ship them to the U.S. by just by googling “GPS jammer.”

Now, defense contractor ITT Exelis thinks it has a solution to fight GPS jamming and spoofing. The company has announced today a new technology called GPS Interference, Detection and Gelocation (IDG). According to Emil Kobylarz, the head of the program at ITT Exelis, IDG will be able to detect one or multiple sources of interference and quickly locate and pinpoint them on a map so that authorities can respond and neutralize the threat. Kobylarz admitted to Mashable that this is not a prevention system, it’s something that only comes in after the incident occurs.

GPS expert and industry consultant Logan Scott, who still has to see the technology in action, warns that this system doesn’t prevent the jamming from happening even though it could ultimately be a deterrent. “It is what it is,” Scott told Mashable. “It’s a reaction system in the sense that it will allow enforcement action. But it’s a a prevention system in the sense that if you know the cops will be chasing you real quick you might consider not turning on the jammer.”

IDG is a system that aims to prevent jamming incidents like the one that happened at Newark International Airport in 2009 when GPS used to go down every day around the same time for weeks. No one knew what was happening. After two months of confusion the culprit was found. A truck driver had a small jammer installed in his vehicle to make it untrackable for his employer. Every time he passed next to it, his device took out the airport’s GPS receivers.

Exelis wants to install a network of sensors around sensitive areas like airports, seaports or utility grids. Using proprietary and confidential algorithms, these would be able to notice and spot a jamming source. Using a web-based interface, operators will see the location of the interference on a map and will be able to send the authorities to stop it.

How effective this system will be remains to be seen. Exelis refused to specify how accurate it will be, and there won’t be an actual product announcement until 2013.

Scott, who is going to see a demonstration of this new technology this week, is cautious about its capabilities. But he also says that it’s time to take action to fight an increasing problem. Last year in the UK, a system of 20 sensors placed along highways and roads detected 60 incidents in six months.

In the cover story he wrote for InsideGNSS, a magazine devoted to all things GPS, he asks: “is our faith in the integrity and infallibility of the Global Positioning System misplaced or, perhaps, insufficiently grounded?” His answer, in a word, is yes. “GPS is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, an extraordinarily useful utility. … But on the other hand, a system technology that introduces major and often times poorly understood vulnerabilities.”

If effective, Exelis’ proposal might make GPS safer and jamming-free, at least in airports and other high-risk areas. For now, though, nobody will save the turn-by-turn navigation you use to reach your parent’s house in the suburbs if the GPS goes down. So ring a good old map in your glove compartment, you know, just in case.

Image courtesy of NASA