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Comment by saulrh | Hacker News Reader

For me, the most interesting part of this article was the casual mention of "the Black Sea spoofing attack of 2017". Apparently an unknown attacker pretty thoroughly messed up traffic in the area by making everyone's navigation systems think they were over a nearby airport. Given that we've had several major maritime collisions reach the news in the last year with no attacks involved at all, I could imagine dozens of deaths and potentially billions of dollars of damages if they'd done this in a major harbor or with hostile intent. Just spoof an oil tanker into the docks at Corpus Christi (edit: or mess with stationkeeping on an oil platform) and you'd have an impossible disaster on your hands.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/mass-gps-spoof...

https://www.gpsworld.com/spoofing-in-the-black-sea-what-real...

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GPS is only a supplement for maritime collision / allision avoidance. All you actually need are: radar, eyes, horn, flags, lights, VHF radio, and charts. Of course GPS is certainly helpful as a backup and provides some protection against human error.

I don’t believe all of those are strictly necessary.

Charts, sextant, and regular visual observations are all strictly necessary.

Some kind of semaphore would probably be handy too.

All you "need" are the stars and some way to track time (a basic implementation conveniently provided by the sun). Everything else just increases accuracy. ;)

> (a basic implementation conveniently provided by the sun).

No. You need an actual clock and charts. The sun and stars are completely useless for determining longitude without a clock.

The Moon on the other hand is marginally useful because its phases can be looked up. But its resolution is poor.

> The sun and stars are completely useless for determining longitude without a clock.

This is not completely true. The stars (and planets) provide for a very nice clock when viewed with sufficient resolution.

There was an interesting youtube video a while back on the SR-71 that could navigate via the stars years and years ago.

Of course the SR-71 probably never had cloud cover problems. :)

edit: I think this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9UwKQKE3A

The SR-71 also had an excellent clock on board.

The COLREGs (as well as local supplemental rules) are rather complex. All of the additional items I listed are implicitly required at least for certain vessels in certain conditions.

Allision - my maritime word for the day

https://gcaptain.com/maritime-word-of-the-day-allision/

...and control over your ship motor + steering without computers. I’m not sure that is true on newer larger ships.

Edit: Would of course not be a spoofing attack.

Airplanes also use Inertial Navigation Systems.

I think the military can go even further and verify that the GPS data is correct.

The military has additional codes available to them (P(Y) and M per [1] et seq.).

[1]: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog862/node/1741

As Wired and others have reported this spoofing attacking in the Black Sea could have been by the Russian Government. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-gps-spoofing

Others commenting that this could be considered terrorism but if the government is doing it in the interest of defense then it won't be considered illegal.

The spoofing is probably so drones think it's a no-fly zone (since the GPS signals say, "you are now at one of the Moscow airports"), so there's less surveillance by amateurs. Are weaponized drone attacks a credible threat?

While unsuccessful, there were weaponized drones used against Maduro (the Venezuelan president) in 2018 [1]. There are other more recent stories from Saudi Arabia [2].

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/17/17703570/caracas-drone-at... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-oil-usa-iran/saudi-...

>Just spoof an oil tanker into the docks at Corpus Christi and you'd have an impossible disaster on your hands.

The crew isn't staring at their GPS screens when they're in a harbor. This also assumed nobody notices the ship that's on a stupid course, they somehow don't get contacted and all the tug boats that are generally responsible for maneuvering those kinds of ships in those kinds of harbors don't do anything to deal with what looks like an out of control ship.

I know it looks like a serious vulnerability on paper but you have to get a lot of things just right for a single system failure (GPS) to cause a serious accident, especially during a time when the crew is on their toes.

Right, you'd need to try it with something like a US Navy missile destroyer instead.

When you have multiple streams of information, and one goes haywire, you are only ok if you can identify which information is bad and which is fine. I remember reading about an airplane crash in which the pilot had a long time to try to figure things out, but once it was clear an instrument was faulty, other instruments that were reporting correct, but unexpected data were assumed to be faulty too, and eventually it was too late to recover. You can't compensate for bad information unless you have a correct model of the fault.

Right. If you were to be caught doing that, especially in a busy harbor...

I'd imagine you'd be labeled a terrorist and no, you won't even get a trial. If you like the ideal of life in jail, that's one way for sure.

My memory of the Black Sea spoofing attack was a lot of speculation that the Russian government was behind it. Consequences that deter an individual (like life in jail) don't necessarily deter state actors.

This is, I think, the essential definition of a "state actor". The actor is operating on behalf of a state that will shield that actor from most if not all consequences of their actions.

Why wouldn't you get a trial?

If you caused enough damage and deaths you will get life in jail, maybe even death penalty. But only after a pissed off jury declares you guilty.

The reason for Gitmo, terrorist claims, etc... is because there are complex international matters that make prosecution difficult. But if you killed people during a malevolent act, you are a criminal and will face justice. There is nothing complex about that, especially if your are a US citizen on US soil.

Didn't Obama shut down gitmo years ago... just kidding, just one of many failed promises... repealing the "PATRIOT" Act being another important one that instead of repealing, he extended and expanded. Trump is not any different but at least he didn't lie about it... sorry for telling the truth, HN Democrats...

I wouldn't imagine ships would use auto-pilot in a crowded area like this. The pilot would be at the helm and it would be pretty clear they were not where their GPS was indicating.

In open sea, however, I could see this being a problem for warships and territorial waters. But I think James Bond already had this one covered.

Correct, tugboats escort large ships into port. They are called pilots.

It is actually incredibly difficult to become a pilot, they must be able to recall relevant charts and regulations from memory.

Source: I come from a long line of seamen

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