Every day, for nearly 10 minutes near the London Stock Exchange, someone blocks signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite network. The navigation system in the car stops working, and the transaction time stamps of financial institutions may be affected. However, these incidents are not cyber attacks carried out by foreign powers. According to Chronos Technology, the most likely culprit for secretly monitoring such incidents is a delivery man who avoided the boss’s attempt to find him.
The signal is weak. Mr. Curry compared them with a 20-watt light bulb 19,300 kilometers away. The jammer is cheap: the driver can buy a dashboard model for £50 (about $78). They are becoming a growing threat. The electromagnetic noise bubbles they generate can interfere with legitimate GPS users. They disrupt civil aviation and disrupt cell phone signals. In the United States, the sale and use of them is prohibited. In the UK, intentional purchases by civilians are prohibited, but purchases are not currently prohibited: the regulator Ofcom is considering prohibiting purchases. In recent years, Australian authorities have destroyed hundreds of gps blocker.
The latest report of the Russian independent media group “Project” on luxury villas owned by senior government officials shows that most of them include GNSS jammers. Reporters tried to use drones to photograph the villa from the air, but often failed.
Most of the country’s military and security agencies have equipment that can block GPS and other satellite navigation signals in areas of all sizes. However, Russia developed it into ordinary art.
The Russian military has always been proud of its capabilities in electronic warfare. They believe that they are important means to counter the effectiveness of Western high-tech weapons. “Sputnik” media reported in 2015 that the Russian military claimed that its electronic warfare capabilities “make aircraft carriers useless.”
GPS is the basic technology of many Western weapons and many important network infrastructures in the West. Therefore, the interference and deception of GPS and other GNSS systems has been a priority for the Russian military for a long time.
In 1997, a Russian company proposed a four-watt GPS and GLONASS GPS jammer that can be used at intervals of 150 to 200 kilometers. They also reported a directional antenna developed for this jammer in cooperation with the Russian military. These antennas focus the interference on specific targets without harming most other users. The US military’s interest in buying jammers for testing and evaluation was enough to buy them for nearly $200,000 in 2002.
In 2016, Russia announced a plan to add GPS jammers to more than 250,000 cell towers to partially defend against attacks from US cruise missiles.
In the same year, an article in the “Moscow Times” declared: “Eat GPS for breakfast at the Kremlin!”. GPS users near the Kremlin regularly find their phones, which indicates that they are 20 kilometers away from the international airport. This has severely damaged Uber and Lyft drivers and delivery services that rely on satellite navigation. The purpose of such identity theft or sending false information to recipients is to protect the Kremlin and its leaders from drone attacks and surveillance. Most drones are programmed at the factory based on the airport and its departure location.
Independent technicians in Moscow also reported that this type of deception uses a classic electronic warfare technique called “assembly.” The L2 and L5 GPS signals and GLONASS satellite navigation signals from Russia have been destroyed. This forces the receiver to rely on the spoofed L1 signal.
In the same year, the same type of activity was discovered in the Black Sea. The RNT Foundation reports that more than 600 ships have been “transported” to land airports. A follow-up report released by the non-profit organization C4ADS in 2019 showed that between 2016 and 2018, the number of cases of fake ships in the Black Sea, Baltic Sea and near Vladivostok in western Russia was nearly 10,000. There is also a strong correlation between the actions of the Russian President. Vladimir Putin and deception.
The C4ADS report pointed out a huge Russian “smart jammer” that operates almost continuously in Syria, and its impact extends far beyond the country’s borders. By definition, the message sent by the smart jammer appears to be a valid GPS signal, but its content does not allow the receiver to calculate the location. The Syrian action prompted the US Maritime Administration to repeatedly warn the international waters near GPS jammers, and the European Air Traffic Management Agency warned the country’s international airspace. Eastern Mediterranean.
In recent years, the Baltic Sea and Scandinavian countries have also witnessed Russian GPS interference. In 2017, the NATO Secretary General complained that the Russian Navy was blocked, which also reduced the quality of mobile phone service in Latvia, Norway and Sweden.
Earlier this year, Norway protested against Russian intervention in its far north, some of which planned to conduct NATO exercises. In the past 17 months, there have been five major interference incidents affecting aviation, construction and other users.
Russia has often proved that scrambling and deceiving GNSS can be a useful tool for homeland security and an effective method of power projection. Its actions and the portability and proliferation of jamming and identity theft devices have undoubtedly reminded the West that Russia can cancel important GNSS services at any time.