I think the answer you will find is that standard GPS is fairly easy
to jam.  The satellite transmissions are fairly weak, which means that
a strong ground-based transmitter on the same set of frequencies could
effectively jam GPS reception.  Indeed, the US military has stated
that they can jam GPS in a region if necessary.

As for corrupting the signal, I think that would require a bit more
work, but I personally think it could be done.  I don't think there is
any kind of cryptographic integrity protection of GPS signals.

However, I would love to be proved wrong.

-derek

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

> Thanks to Eugene and Ian... but... I'm afraid Dorothy's note is just a
> brief discussion of the potential applications of SmartLocator.
> SmartLocator is/was a product/prototype of International Series Research
> Inc., around 1996; I haven't found any more info about it (further to
> Denning's note) and suspect it doesn't exist anymore. In any case, based on
> what I've read in Denning's article, I think SmartLocator does not claim to
> secure GPS integrity. SmartLocator claims to provide a `location signature`
> using GPS, that is, a way to prove that the sender of a message has a GPS
> receiver in a particular position in space and time. Actually, this could
> indeed be quite useful, if this works, so one wonders how it worked and why
> one (me) never heard of it so far. Maybe someone on the list knows better?
> Or maybe we should look for a patent. Frankly: my expectations are low, I
> will be surprised if this was really done securely.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Amir Herzberg
> 
> IBM Research Lab in Haifa (Tel Aviv Office)
> http://www.hrl.il.ibm.com
> 
> 
> Eugene Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 05/09/2000 12:10:27 AM
> 
> Please respond to Eugene Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> To:   Ian BROWN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> cc:   [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>       (bcc: Amir Herzberg/Haifa/IBM)
> Subject:  Re: GPS integrity
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I presume the paper in question is
> http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/Grounding.txt
> 
> Ian BROWN writes:
>  > Dorothy Denning wrote an interesting paper on authenticating location
> using
>  > GPS signals... I think it's reachable from her home page as well as the
>  > following citation:
>  >
>  > D. E. Denning and P. F. MacDoran, "Location-Based Authentication:
> Grounding
>  > Cyberspace for Better Security," Computer Fraud and Security, Feb. 1996
>  >
>  > Ian :)
>  >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/      PP-ASEL      N1NWH
       [EMAIL PROTECTED]                        PGP key available

Reply via email to