Published in News

Threats to GPS

by on27 June 2008

Image

Covered in Jam


GPS jamming is becoming endemic with almost every world power, and hackers are working out a way to stuff global positioning systems up.

According to GPS World, which we get for its cut-out-and-keep recipes, over the last six months intentional jamming is more vigorous than a Viagra-stoked March hare. The article mentions that North Korea has been attempting to flog  a device capable of jamming GPS signals, cloned from Russian gear.

China has deployed special vans equipped with sophisticated electronics designed to jam GPS signals. Meanwhile several Internet sites have been doing a roaring trade in small, localized GPS jammers. These include a "GPS Blocker" which will automatically protect you from any GPS tracking on and within your vehicle.

While the Federal Communications Commission jammer device says that such gear is illegal it does not seem to have had much of a deterrent on people. Meanwhile, there are countermeasures that are being developed. Receivers with the capability to sense jamming-to-noise power (J/N) in the front-end could be installed on mobile towers across the country, could constitute a monitoring network to detect and locate by triangulation any jamming sources.

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency is apparently building one. This will automatically take in such reports from GPS sensors and use them to determine in aggregate regions where interference is occurring. The coppers will then descend like a ton of bricks on the jammers.

More here.
Last modified on 28 June 2008
Rate this item
(0 votes)