Alternatives to GPS Expected to be Less Susceptible to Spoofing or Jamming Attacks

The Global Positioning System, or GPS, as it's more widely referred to, was first developed by the US in the 1970s, and has been used ever since as the main method of determining location, speed, and even time. It relies on a set of 30 satellites in orbit, as well as their respective stations on the surface of the Earth. while the system has worked well for several decades, it is not completely immune to sabotage, and if any of the satellites or stations were to fail or be destroyed, the entire system could be compromised. To address this, says Samantha Masunaga, in her L.A. Times article, there are many companies working on guidance technologies that don't rely on those satellites, thereby assuring accurate and reliable location reporting.

GPS systems are susceptible to attacks from a few different methods. The more common method is the use of a GPS jammer, which prevents a GPS receiver from getting a signal, essentially making the receiver useless. In that situation, the attack can be problematic, in that the user no longer has control over their GPS system. However, the attack that poses far more concern is known as "GPS spoofing." GPS spoofing is a method by which a hacker feeds the GPS receiver a false signal, and causes the navigation change very slowly. Because the change is so subtle, the system doesn't detect it as an issue, so no alarms sound.  A hacker could send the user into a dangerous situation, or simply somewhere other than where they wanted to go, and the system would be none the wiser until it was too late.

One company, called Satelles, has their own set of location signals being beamed from a separate set of satellites. When there are multiple sources performing the same function in some industries, some might call that redundant and think it a waste of resources. However, with something as fragile and important to things like national security as a positioning system, it's better to have multiple redundancies. If one of the systems becomes vulnerable to hacking, another one can fill in and take its place. Alternatively, one of the branches of the US military, called DARPA, is working on an advanced navigation system (ANS) that relies on signals from local radio towers, cell towers, and TV towers. Those signals can then be triangulated by the ANS receiver to provide information about the receiver's precise location.

Others have looked into the option of using image recognition on vehicles to determine location based on the geography or landmarks of the surroundings. One company, Iridium, has a set of 66 satellites that were originally designed for satellite phones, but have since been re-purposed for location services, which are at higher quality due to the closer proximity to the Earth's surface. No matter which technology ends up becoming the dominant replacement for current GPS systems, it seems greatly beneficial that they are trying to go in a safer, more secure direction. Anything that is resistant to spoofing, jamming, and other sorts of attacks will be great for commercial and military applications, and may one day lead to a completely different default global positioning protocol.

***************************************************************************************************
Find out more about us at www.sepulvedaescrow.net. Any Questions? Contact our Escrow Expert! Sepulveda Escrow Corporation (818) 838-1831. Follow our company on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

**************************************************************************************************