Digital hacking on aircraft GPS systems has risen by 400%, says advisory board

A new form of digital hacking which can interfere with commercial aircrafts to send them off course, known as GPS “spoofing”, has risen 400%, according to aviation advisory board OPSGROUP.

Cybersecurity researchers have claimed that recent incidents of GPS spoofing have seen cyberattackers take over clocks on board aircrafts, giving them the ability to physically hack a pilot’s sense of time.

Talking at a hacking convention on Saturday (10 August), Ken Munro, founder of UK cybersecurity company Pen Test Partners said: “We think too much about GPS being a source of position, but it’s actually a source of time.

“We’re starting to see reports of the clocks on board airplanes during spoofing events start to do weird things.”

In an interview with Reuters, Munro described an incident of GPS spoofing which caused a commercial aircraft’s onboard clocks to increase by years, which meant it lost access to its digitally-encrypted communication systems.

The plane, which was operated by a Western airline, was grounded for weeks while it had its onboard systems manually reset, according to Munro.

The majority of GPS spoofing attacks involve illegal ground-based GPS systems which broadcast incorrect location transmissions. These kind of attacks are especially frequent in conflict zones and can be used to send missiles and drones off course.

Munro said despite GPS spoofing not always causing a plane to crash, it does begin to cause confusion.

“And you run the risk of starting what we call a cascade of events, where something minor happens, something else minor happens, and then something serious happens,” Munro told Reuters.