New, terrifying cyber hack that could bring down passenger planes

Experts warn that a new, terrifying hack that could bring down passenger planes is becoming more common.

GPS spoofing can cause aircraft to deviate from their flight path and confuse the autopilot’s landing function, potentially causing them to miss the designated platform.

Cybersecurity experts are warning of a rise in GPS spoofing attacks, which have increased by 400 percent since the first quarter of this year.

They are also increasingly common in war zones, with areas such as Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East becoming flashpoints.

Experts don’t yet officially know why hackers are now using GPS spoofing, but it can be used to alter location data to track people’s activities and compromise flights.

GPS spoofing attacks can cause planes to crash. Ransomware is installed that can derail the plane and cause it to crash into other planes, terrain, or the ocean.

The attacks are becoming more frequent, but experts still don’t know exactly why. That’s why a group has been set up to investigate the incidents and determine who is manipulating the plane’s GPS systems and why.

A recently published report A study by cybersecurity firm OPS Group found that the number of GPS spoofing attacks worldwide has increased from an average of 200 per day between January and March to 900 per day since April.

According to them, on some days spoofing attacks targeted as many as 1,350 flights.

Hackers send false radio signals to the airline’s receiving antennas to override legitimate GPS signals and send false alerts to the aircraft’s location systems, which are supposed to keep the plane away from rough terrain.

Pilots have reportedly noticed that one of the first signs a hacker has used GPS spoofing is when the plane’s clock starts running backwards.

“We think too much about GPS as a source of positioning, but in reality it’s a source of time,” Ken Munro, founder of cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners, said during a presentation at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas on Saturday.

‘We are increasingly seeing clocks on board aircraft doing strange things during spoofing events.’

He later told Reuters that ‘the on-board clocks of a major Western airline were suddenly set forward several years, leaving the plane without access to its digitally encrypted communications systems.’

In April, Finnair was forced to temporarily suspend all flights to Tartu in Estonia due to GPS spoofing, which the airline blamed on Russian hackers

In April, Finnair was forced to temporarily suspend all flights to Tartu, Estonia, due to GPS spoofing. The airline blamed Russian hackers.

“Will it cause a plane crash? No, it won’t,” Munro told Reuters.

“What it does is it creates a bit of confusion. And you run the risk of having a cascade of events where something small happens, something small happens, and then something big happens.”

However, experts report an increase in incidents near war zones, particularly in the Middle East and around Ukraine and Russia.

Stuart Fox, director of flight and technical operations at the International Air Transport Association, said The Wall Street Journal in February that the incidents raise concerns about cybersecurity risks, although they have not yet caused any major security issues.

“In the longer term, we need to ensure that we are involved in the design of future satellite navigation systems. Countering this risk is a priority for the Agency,” the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said. said in January.

These issues remain largely unresolved, but a GPS spoofing working group of 450 registered members has been formed to address the problem, OPS Group reported.

The participants are representatives of industry associations and airlines, including United Airlines, American Airlines, Aer Lingus, Turkish Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

NASA, Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and FlightSafety International are also involved in the working group.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told DailyMail.com: ‘We have not received any reports of GPS spoofing in the National Airspace System,’ adding that ‘the FAA does not track spoofing and jamming incidents for other regions.’

DailyMail.com has also contacted the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and several airlines for comment.