On January 25, 2016, Air Force engineers were scheduled to kill off a GPS satellite named SVN-23, which was the oldest int he navigation constellation. The satellite should have just peacefully turned off, but instead, its disappearance triggered a software bug that left the timing of some of the remaining GPS satellites — 15 of them — off by 13.7 microseconds. Though such a short amount of time may not seem like a big deal, according to Wired, it was a big deal for the first-responders in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Louisana, whose GPS devices wouldn’t lock with satellites. And there were FAA ground transceivers that got fault reporters. Meanwhile, the Spanish digital TV networks had receiver issues and BBC digital radio listeners had their British broadcast interrupted. In total, this outage caused 12 hours of problems. It was a reminder that when GPS messes up, things go back around the world. The 24 satellites that keep GPS services running in the U.S. aren’t necessarily secure, writes Wired, and they are vulnerable to screw-ups, or attacks of the cyber or corporeal kind. The threat to our GPS networks increases as other countries get closer to having their own fully functional GPS networks. GPS does more than just provide directions: The systems also give ultra-accurate timing measurements to utility grid operators, stock exchanges, data centers, and cell networks. Any disruption to the GPS network is a disruption to those systems as well. An accident like the one in January can be dealt with because there was an identifiable cause. But the harder to deal with are are when things are hacked, jammed or blocked.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
