Technological Advance in GPS And Its Spoofing

You must have heard about the news that Iran captured a US Military drone by spoofing GPS signals and fooled it into landing in Iran,
A major step change happened in May 2000, when USA re-calibrated GPS satellites to improve accuracy. This resulted in accuracy improvement from about 60 meters to about 2 meters, which essentially jump started turn-by-turn navigation industry. We have come a long way since then and now we even have a choice of satellite system with Russian GLONASS. Most of the phones now-days have both GPS and GLONASS signal receivers. With about 32 GPS satellites and 31 GLONASS satellites, the time to lock on to GPS signals have significantly reduced to just a couple of seconds.

What could happen in future is even more exciting. There is a technique called "Carrier Phase Tracking" which is already being used for Land Surveys. If this is incorporated into our phones, accuracy can be improved to just a few centimeters !!! What can I do with that kind of accuracy? If I tend to misplace my glasses too often, I will place a micro tracker on them. Then I can ask my phone to find my glasses and it will navigate me to them !!!

You can watch some of these at this excellent :TED Talks:
Again recently one more news that pop up that : researchers fooling a luxury Yacht to go off course by spoofing GPS signals: Texas students hijack superyacht with GPS-spoofing luggage.


"The experiment, which took place with the ship-owner's permission, is part of continuing research by the team into GPS spoofing. Last year Humphreys demonstrated how the same spoofing technique could be used from 1km away against a GPS-guided drone to an audience from the US Department of Homeland Security at White Sands, New Mexico."

What will you do with that kind of tech?