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Comment by codesnik | Hacker News Reader

GPS is routinely spoofed in area around Kremlin, for a couple of years already, to a great annoyance of drivers and runners. Coordinates are replaced by those from Vnukovo airport. It seems they try to prevent operations of consumer grade drones, many of them refuse to fly near known airports.

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I would like to think that, having done research on GPS spoofing and being generally interested in GPS, I would have heard of this before if it were routinely done anywhere in the world. It sounds like you don't have this from an online source but from first-hand experience. Did anyone write this up? Is there local news about it perhaps?

I did not dig up for a detailed technical write up, but have a plenty media sites mentions (sorry for original Russian content):

Just news, mentioning this, back to 2016 https://lenta.ru/articles/2016/11/07/gpsoff/

Nice write up, also from 2016 https://meduza.io/feature/2016/10/19/teleportatsiya-iz-kreml...

News from Jan, 2018 https://snob.ru/news/156463

Nov, 2018 https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2018/11/12/786188-kre...

Hope that helps!

P.S. And yes, I personally see this behaviour near Kremlin. It's almost impossible to order a taxi nearby.

Wow, this is really happening. I'm surprised to hear this, very interesting, thanks!

Well, yes. It's happening. That's why there's a report about it.

You can also check [1]: "through a collaboration with researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, we expose the use of GPS spoofing in active Russian combat zones, particularly Syria, for airspace denial purposes. This is a capability scarcely reported in the public domain. Using data from a scientific sensor on the International Space Station (ISS), we are able to identify ongoing activity that poses significant threats to civilian airline GPS systems"

- works best on desktop though

[1] https://www.c4reports.org/aboveusonlystars

That does not happen all the time though. I would say geolocation works nicely pretty much all the time.

Not sure why it's not possible to order a taxi, since you're not supposed to provide your own coordinates but rather a point where you want to be picked up.

there are a number of videos on youtube of people operating handheld android, ios and dedicated gps devices near the kremlin, showing the location displayed on the screen to be many dozens of km away. this will have a similar effect on a $1000 DJI drone.

Do you know if GLONASS is also being spoofed in these same areas?

Yes.

Grigory Bakunov did some research

https://telegram.me/addmeto (Search on 'GLONASS' on [19.10.16])

Translated in part -

"That's what I found out: somewhere inside the Kremlin there is (and probably is moving) a powerful transmitter. It simulates the operation of the GPS and GLONASS satellite at L1 frequencies and makes noise at L2 and L5 frequencies. "

(Spoofs civilian, blocks military)

He thinks the airport is chosen randomly, not to geo-block drones which is a bit of a strange idea.

"These coordinates can be entered directly or selected from the list offered by the device manufacturer. It so happened that in these lists for Russia appear only the centers of large cities and Airports. As you understand, Vnukovo is the first alphabetically located airport in the Moscow region. And in this version I also believe, of course."

And not only there. It seems that they do it for other places that Putin visits for long periods of time. And that can be used to discover those places: https://twitter.com/billbrowder/status/1114288676408836096

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