In a world where cell phones and cars guide us everywhere, we've come to trust global positioning as much as we trust our own senses. What happens when that trust is broken?
To protect transportation systems, a multidisciplinary team at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory develops technology to expose manipulation of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signals that tell us where we are in space and time. It is important that these signals maintain their integrity and reliability, because GPS depends on its users to fully trust the information that it relays.
"At its core, GPS is a faith-based system," said Austin Albright, who led the team to invent the first highly sensitive, portable detector that can recognize GPS spoofing in real time, even while moving.
Spoofing sends fake signals that mimic authentic GPS transmissions but generate false information about location, time or both. For example, spoofing can make a truck delivering radioactive materials appear to be traveling to its destination when the contents are being stolen and taken elsewhere. GPS jamming, another kind of interference, overwhelms GPS receivers with noise that easily drowns out the legitimate satellite signals from space.
ORNL develops and tests high-performance GPS spoofing detector
Commercial products can mitigate GPS jamming, but reliable spoofing detection has remained a challenge. To close that gap, the ORNL team combined expertise in sensing, radio frequency signals, mathematics, computing, electronics and national security to create a detector that has proven to be extremely sensitive, including outperforming industry-developed systems when tested at a recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security test event.
The ORNL technology detects location, time, and data spoofing. It is effective regardless of whether the attacker is faking all satellite signals or only a few, and regardless of movement. Its most distinctive feature is the ability to distinguish spoofing, even when fake and real signals are equally strong, a functionality no other known systems possess.
"Ours is the best in the world," Albright said. "Trucking needs a solution that works without special conditions or dependence on a trusted reference source."
The ORNL technology operates independently, without a GPS receiver or knowledge of the available GPS signals. The detector uses a software-defined radio, a new method of applying mathematics directly to the radio frequencies received, and an embedded graphics processing unit to perform the math in real time. The team is now adapting the design for greater affordability.
ORNL's jamming and spoofing research is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Radiological Security and occurs under ORNL's Domestic Transportation Security Program. Former ORNL researcher, Jason Bonior, originated the idea for the spoofing detector; Albright and ORNL researcher, Sarah Powers, developed the technology. Other contributing ORNL researchers are Nick Burchfield and Hollis Neel.
GPS jamming and spoofing increasingly hides crime and illicit activity
In the United States, it is illegal to import, sell, or use GPS jammers, though purchasing them is not prohibited (since they should not be for sale). They are nevertheless sold online as "personal privacy protection devices," posing real-world risks that are not fully understood.
ORNL researchers began studying GPS jamming as criminal cases and independent trackers made the growing problem clear. Independent websites like GPSwise.aero track thousands of airplane jamming cases and hundreds of spoofing incidents daily. International criminal networks have adopted spoofing to steal loaded long-haul trucks, a major risk to transportation security.
In one recent, widely reported case that was not part of Albright's research, thieves spoofed GPS to hijack every shipment of a specialty tequila at the company founded by chef Guy Fieri and former Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar.
"Everyone uses cargo monitoring with GPS tracking, whether for your personal packages, your pizza, or nuclear materials," Albright said. "If GPS gets jammed, that delivery disappears, and you don't know where to respond, but at least you know something is wrong. Spoofing is scarier because everything still appears to move as you expect, so you think everything is safe and sound when it's not."
Enhancing U.S. transportation security for the future
Cargo thefts can affect prices and jobs, but the greater concern is the diversion of dangerous or critical items such as handguns, pharmaceuticals, or radioactive materials from intended recipients and into the wrong hands.
Albright is raising awareness of these risks by educating transportation security organizations and helping the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers develop an international standard for certifying resilience in global positioning, navigation and timing equipment. Additionally, because real-time indicators for spoofing are not available for the trucking sector, Albright is planning research to identify and characterize the baseline level of threat to the industry from GPS spoofing.
He is motivated by concern for the drivers, whose early awareness is key. "I need the driver to know something bad is happening and call someone," Albright said. "Like a carbon monoxide alarm alerts you to an invisible danger, spoofing detection is critical to alerting us to a new invisible danger."
Albright and the ORNL team will continue to detect and prevent GPS deception, enhancing transportation security across the United States.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . - S. Heather Duncan
