Preventing GPS spoofing is hard—but you can at least detect it

This demonstration of GPS/GNSS spoofing shows a semi-autonomous car being misled into taking the wrong road.

Today at the IAA (International Motor Show) in Frankfurt, Regulus Cyber announced a new software-only GPS spoof detection product. This product, Pyramid GNSS, is what the company was hyping when it executed a Pied Piper attack on a Tesla Model S this June.

Regulus Cyber demonstrated the new product, Pyramid GNSS, to us yesterday via Web conference from the IAA. Pyramid GNSS was running on a Linux-powered laptop with GPS receiver and successfully intercepted spoofed GNSS signals coming from another laptop with a software-defined radio a few feet away. An iPhone in the same room picked up the spoofed GPS signals and erroneously showed itself driving down a nearby highway. But the laptop running Pyramid-which had a copy of what appeared to be Google Maps running-remained stationary.

It's important to recognize what this solution isn't, of course. Pyramid GNSS does not enable a protected system to get correct positioning data when its GPS receiver is being spoofed-it just prevents the system from believing and acting on the false data.

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