Researchers Steer Off Course to Show Potential Power of ‘GPS Spoofing’

New research shows the GPS software we all rely on can be hacked and manipulated. In June, a team at the University of Texas employed “GPS spoofing” to disorient the navigation system on a luxury yacht. Jeffrey Brown talks with Todd Humphreys, the researcher behind the projects, along with technology analyst Milton Clary.

In this video, Milton Clary, a Senior Analyst with Overlook Systems Technologies, who works with federal government agencies to identify such threats, points out “if GPS goes away or it gets spoofed, that could be very disruptive”. And puts in a good word for eLORAN… “One of the biggest uses of GPS is not the position data, but the timing information. And there’s countries — United Kingdom, Japan and Korea all have a system called LORAN. It was an American navigation system that goes back to the ’40s. And they’re building an enhanced LORAN that would provide timing signals as a backup. And that system, LORAN, would be very, very difficult to jam.”

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Watch Researchers Steer Off Course With Power of ‘GPS Spoofing’ on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.