The UK government report warns that the UK needs to reduce its critical infrastructure and emergency services’ reliance on GPS technology to mitigate the potentially catastrophic impact of GPS interference signals.
Cabinet Secretary Oliver Dowden said in a long-awaited Scientific Bureau document that the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is often described as a “stealth tool.” “As shown in this report, it is in our national interest to recognize the exact nature and extent of our dependence on GNSS.
He wrote in the Satellite report: “In the event of a GNSS outage, we must take steps to increase the resilience of critical services, including the use of potential backup systems when needed.” When and where: Studying critical dependencies (PDF) .
Last year, the government warned Britain that if there was a major GPS failure, it would lose £ 1 billion a day. In 2016, the decommissioning of U.S. satellites led to errors in the GPS network, which affected some industries in the UK.
The report says, however, that one of the biggest threats is increasing interference with GNSS signals caused by “interference” and “spoofing.”
“In the past 15 years, GNSS portable jammer systems have proliferated sharply: from military-only zones to criminal groups to criminal groups, so much so that people are now hunting down the interferers and detained by ordinary civilians. To protect themselves from everyday life Followed risk. ”
Emergency services have two main applications for GNSS, which use data from callers’ phones to locate emergencies. And navigate quickly and successfully.
Technology is also widely used in financial services. Transactions are usually determined by algorithmic transactions, which requires timestamps in the range of milliseconds to microseconds. This form of accurate timing also requires traceability for auditing.
Charles Curry, the founder and author of the report for the elastic company GPS Chronos Technology, told El Reg: “In my opinion, cyber attacks on the Internet are no different from cyber attacks using GPS jamming technology. North Korea and Russia have always been Doing this. What would prevent someone from launching a high-power jammer in central London and out of the financial services industry?
He added that the government must act in a way that establishes a safeguard system, because legal deterrence alone is not enough to avoid the blockade.
Under the Wireless Communications and Telegraph Act (2006), transmissions are intentionally carried out in the GNSS band without permission or exemption. It is therefore illegal to use bottling equipment, but not to own the equipment. “This means that the court must prove its intention to use, which can be difficult,” the report said.
GPS was originally a military system that allowed civilian users to get downgraded services-with accuracy up to tens of meters-but in 1983 Korean Air Flight 007 was shot down by Russia and accidentally stolen, Ronald Reagan ) Signed a decree authorizing civilians to use GPS.
The report calls for greater awareness of our dependence on global navigation satellite systems; the need to protect the GNSS spectrum; improved national risk assessments; and the need to provide backups such as improved low-frequency navigation systems (LORAN). Governments, businesses and universities will also need to take a more coherent approach.