Inside job interrupted. (Source: The CyberWire Daily Podcast)

GPS is a Cold War artifact. Designed in the 1970s to guide munitions toward Moscow, it now underpins the global economy. Yet the signal is dangerously faint.

Karpf joins Dave Bittner and Maria Varmazis to dismantle the growing threat of maritime spoofing. The barrier to entry for electronic warfare has collapsed. For approximately $50, commercial off-the-shelf technology can now replicate the modulation of GPS signals. This capability allows adversaries to overpower satellite transmissions and drift autonomous ships off course—turning navigation errors into geopolitical flashpoints.

Key topics

• The Democratization of Disruption: Denial of service is no longer the domain of state superpowers. A $50 software-defined radio can drown out the “whispered conversation” between a ship and medium-earth orbit satellites, effectively blinding modern navigation systems with brute-force noise.
• The 12-Mile Trap: Spoofing serves as a subtle weapon for territorial aggression. By introducing incremental timing delays, actors can lure vessels into the 12-nautical-mile limit of a nation’s territorial waters, manufacturing a pretext for seizure or military engagement—a tactic observed from the Black Sea to the coast of Venezuela.
• Digital Signatures for RF: The legacy GPS architecture trusts blindly. The necessary evolution involves applying network security principles to the physical layer, specifically using digital signatures to authenticate the source of a signal before a receiver accepts it as truth.

Original appearance: Listen to the episode