GPS spoofing: civil aviation has problems – currently in South Korea
Fake navigation signals are increasingly being received by aircraft instruments. There were problems at the border with North Korea at the weekend.
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GPS malfunctions and falsified navigation signals disrupted air and sea traffic in South Korea over the past weekend. This was announced by the South Korean military, which accused North Korea of being the cause of the disruptions. According to the US news agency Reuters, areas in the west of the South Korean peninsula near the border region with North Korea were affected.
South Korea's largest airport, Incheon International Airport, is located around 100 kilometers south of the border. According to the South Korean government, around 500 aircraft and hundreds of ships were affected in similar incidents at the end of May/beginning of June. It is not known how many were directly affected.
GPS spoofing is becoming more and more of a problem
GPS spoofing has become an increasing problem for civil aviation in recent months. According to a report by a working group under the umbrella of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a total of 41,000 flights affected by spoofing were recorded between 15 July and 15 August 2024 alone. While an average of around 300 flights per day were affected by false GPS signals in January, this figure rose to around 1,500 flights per day in August.
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The effects on the operation of modern aircraft are serious, as a large number of aircraft systems work with satellite-based navigation, the ICAO emphasizes. These include flight management systems, weather radar and position transmitters. According to the report, the signal falsifications are primarily related to military conflicts such as those in the Middle East and Ukraine. Among other things, they were used to divert attacking drones from their course. According to the surveys, most flights were affected in the airspace of Cyprus (5655), followed by Israel (Tel Aviv, 3228) and Egypt (Cairo, 3275). Incidents were also reported in the Baltic Sea region.
This could solve the problem
In order to counter the increasing GPS problems, the use of CRPA (Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna), an antenna technology that uses several antenna elements to recognize the direction of incoming signals and can therefore detect and block out interfering transmitters, is being discussed in civil aviation. The use of encrypted navigation signals could also be a way out. There are plans to use the European Galileo navigation system to provide encrypted signals for the civilian sector for the first time in the future, thus protecting them against falsification.
(mki)
