GPS Signals Can Be Spoofed

Researchers are Cornell have discovered that GPS signals can be spoofed! By placing a signal near the receiving device, gradually the navigation device would accept the spoofed signal as real. The article doesn’t say exactly how near “near” is, but I’d bet that it would have to be at least a couple dozen yards or more for this to be effective. Apparently the researchers are confident they could get around any protections suggested by the DOD back in 2003!

Does anyone start thinking of the bad guys in Die Hard 2 when they think about this? It’s kinda scary to think about from a safety point of view. However, I’m equally confident that someone industrious will use it to muck up location based services so that all queries for “Joe’s Pizza” in such and such area get diverted to “Bob’s Pizza” instead.