>A $225 GPS spoofer can send sat-nav-guided vehicles into oncoming traffic *<p>* by fooling the vehicle into driving the wrong way through a one-way street.<p>That's a serious asterisk. I think there are much more interesting worst-case applications for this, like kidnapping, randsom, misdirecting emergency responders etc. Some of those are mentioned by the article, but the headline just causes doubt and disappointment.
While the whole thing is interesting (mostly because of the design of the spoofer rather than it being anything else that's new) this headline is deliberately misleading.
Obviously sat-nav guided systems should not rely on unprotected satellite navigation alone. You need complementary systems.<p>EU's GNSS has PRS (Public Regulated Service) is authenticated and can be used in sensitive applications for civilian uses. US has GPS modes that are protected but they seem to be only for military.<p>There is also Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). They augment GPS/Golnass and Galileo and provide integrity and more accuracy.<p>Typically new sat-nav systems have multi-constellation capability and they can receive from from GPS/GNSS/Golnass. Even new smartphones have that capability. Of course, if all of them are unprotected, you can spoof them all parallel.
Could be used on self-driving vehicles like the giant dump trucks in quarries, or harvesters in corn fields?<p>What about autonomous trains? Cause that would off the rails.
considering that GPS has civilian and military parts of the signal, are the messages not signed by, i don't know, U.S. military or something? how come it is easy to spoof?