GPS attacks near Iran wreak havoc on delivery and mapping apps

People on social media The media reported strange events in delivery And navigation apps – drivers seem to be in the middle of the sea, or the 10-minute trip home suddenly jumps to 30 minutes. For residents of the GCC countries, life has more or less resumed despite this Iran’s ongoing attacksThis is a subtle reminder of his presence The war is still being waged overhead.

These problems are widely related Electronic warfare. In today’s conflicts, disabling satellite navigation is a common tactic. By interfering with the Global Positioning System (GPS), militaries make it difficult for opponents to precisely direct drones, missiles, or surveillance tools.

But the same satellite signals used by the military also power civilian aircraft, shipping, infrastructure, and everyday navigation applications. When these signals are disrupted, the impacts extend to airlines, shipping routes, logistics, and digital services, all of which depend on precise location and timing.

These disruptions are generally caused by two related but distinct technologies: GPS jamming and GPS spoofing. Understanding the difference explains why sometimes navigation stops working, and other times, it seems normal but shows the wrong location.

How GPS attacks work.

GPS satellites are located about 12,400 miles away and transmit approximately 50 watts of transmit power, so by the time the signal reaches Earth, it is relatively weak. This makes it easy to disable GPS. A small, inexpensive jammer purchased online and powered by a battery can disrupt navigation and timing across a local area.

GPS jamming occurs when someone intentionally drowns out the weak signals from GPS satellites with a much stronger noise signal. “It’s like saturating your eyeball: You’re trying to see something very far away, and someone comes next to you with a flashlight, and now you can’t understand it,” says Jim Stroup, head of growth for technology company SandboxAQ’s navigation product AQNav.

Meanwhile, GPS spoofing occurs when someone broadcasts fake GPS signals that mimic real satellites, tricking receivers into calculating an incorrect location. When a spoofing attack occurs, the navigation looks normal but shows the wrong site. Plagiarism is more complex and “more insidious,” Stroup says.

Instead of just blocking the real GPS signal, the scammer tries to impersonate it. It listens for real signals from satellites, then quickly rebroadcasts fake signals so that a receiver on a drone, ship or plane thinks a new satellite has appeared.

The recipient adds this fake satellite to his accounts. Because the amplifier provides somewhat incorrect distance information, the system goes off course. This can quietly drive the drone to a different location or move the drone’s location on the screen without triggering alarms.

“You can actually take a drone and direct it off course,” says Stroup. “And to the drone and to the pilots, everything on the GPS will look like it’s OK operationally.” He gives an example: A bad actor could simulate a drone over its border, causing it to cross the border and potentially causing a geopolitical incident.

More than just maps

For most people, the effects of GPS attacks go beyond the maps on your phone. Healthcare systems, energy facilities, and even nuclear plants rely on GPS for precise timing to keep everything running smoothly. Their clocks are synchronized across facilities to ensure that each calculation is precisely timed.

If your GPS is down for long periods or over large areas, it’s not just scam Uber rides. That could mean flights grounded, power grids under strain, and hospitals where clocks and safety systems suddenly become out of sync.

“Many of these scientific and utility settings, health care settings, don’t just need to know the time,” Stroup says. “It’s the fact that they have 18 very disparate and sensitive technical systems, and they have to operate with Swiss-like precision and they have to be perfectly in sync with the time. If one thing is even slightly out of sync, it can cause catastrophic problems.”

GPS is better?

There are other systems besides GPS and similar technology, which insiders call alt-PNT (position, navigation, timing), but “not everything in the alt-PNT space can solve all three tasks,” Stroup says. “Some will only focus on P and N, some will only focus on T.”

Some temporary loopholes are intuitive but limited. One set of technologies, known as visual navigation (vis-nav), is a high-tech version of what pilots did before GPS. “They looked down, and they had a map, and they said, ‘Okay, here’s the Eiffel Tower, here’s the Eiffel Tower, and I should be here,'” he says. Today, computers can perform the same function much faster.