Spoofing on the High Seas

A radio navigation research team from the Cockrell School’s Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics successfully discovered they could subtly coerce a 213-foot superyacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the difficulty of carrying out a spoofing attack at sea and to determine how easily sensors in the ship’s command room could identify the threat. The animation above shows how they did it.