White Rose Photo: Michael Evans
In June, the navigation system of the 213′ yacht White Rose was taken over by a team of University of Texas students. Using only a laptop, a small antenna, and a GPS “spoofing” device, the team fed a stronger signal to the yacht’s steering system than the genuine GPS signal, effectively over-riding the incoming signal from the actual GPS satellites. Fortunately, the students were not pirates, and they readily relinquished control of the $80 million yacht.
The students were lead by Professor Todd Humphreys who recently also hijacked a surveillance drone, much to the chagrin of the FAA and the Department of Homeland. The GPS spoofing equipment only cost around $1,000. The only good news is that the software itself is rather complicated and took the University of Texas team around four years to develop. Nevertheless, the prospect of the GPS navigational systems of planes, ships and even automobiles being in danger of being hijacked is troubling, to say the least. Thanks to Phil Leon for contributing to this post.
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There is no replacement for celestial navigation, sextant, chronometer, and calibrated compass. What ever happened to the Loran!
The same thing happend in the first Gulf War, in 1991, Remember Melissa Rathbun-Nealy Lost? How could this happen: The Iraquis were
using a Russian system to jam up the GPS. And what ever happened to
the land based: just follow the radiator cap!
Having been raised at sea long before Loran let alone GPS my celestial navigation is still excellent. However one needs favourable weather to take sights so GPS has its place, Loran is of course discontinued now. It is not a good idea to link all these electronics together on the Bridge. GPS should give you the position which one compares to the DR (Dead Reckoning) plot and sights obtained any corrupt GPS reading will show up as at suspect. The steering system should be separate and the course fed in by the OOW as needed. Any Navigator worth his/her salt has at least two methods of finding his/her position at anyone time – never rely on just one system and yes the DR plot can be quite a good positioning system if accurately maintained. When you get a sight it can be reset and the difference between the two positions used as a correction to help maintain DR plot accuracy. In the 1950’s we crossed the Western Ocean many times in bad weather with only a DR plot to work with – scary but we made it!!
Good Watch.