Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance
alecmuffett.com
alecmuffett.com
- https://globe.adsb.fi/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zo...
- https://adsb.lol/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zoom=14...
Relevant discussion on r/adsb: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1qp3q9n/interesting/ where they note it's also absent on FR24, airplanes.live, and theairtraffic.com.
The adsb-x feeder map: https://map.adsbexchange.com/mlat-map/ They probably won't have a hard time identifying who contributed that data.
Juvenile times call for juvenile measures. In case you haven’t noticed, the US is being run by a bunch of arrested development high school bullies. Juvenile is one of the only languages they understand.
Vance however is the real deal. May god/science help us all if Trump ever has his long overdue stroke.
https://www.icao.int/sites/default/files/APAC/Meetings/2025/...
I need to check all the work I did towards the end of yesterday. Valuable lesson. Thanks.
This instance of spoofing is notable for being the first that I know of that wasn't primitive vector art or text, but a raster image!
In that area of Florida multiple receivers would have picked up actual ADS-B broadcasts. ADS-B aggregators do have various anti-spoofing measures, but they're not impossible to circumvent.
The only case of actual RF spoofing of aircraft transponder signals that I know of was actually done by the U.S. Secret Service, which interfered with passenger jet collision alert systems (TCAS) by apparently broadcasting bogus signals near Ronald Reagan National Airport (KDCA): https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/aviation-flights-whi...
(TIS-B is a system that broadcasts ADS-B-like signals for aircraft that are being tracked by radar but either don't have ADS-B Out or otherwise might not be picked up by other aircraft with ADS-B In, e.g. maybe they're at a low altitude.)
There have been a couple other incidents with the TIS-B system. E.g. this apparent test near Dallas in 2022 that generated dozens of false targets in an interesting pattern: https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1481712428932997122 There was a similar incident around LAX several months later.
But there’s so much wrong with the data: 50k ft at 80knots (ground speed!) in a 747.
Wait until you hear about Sporadic-E or Aurora. RF is a weird place full of natural phenomena making the impossible very possible.
Yes, radio propagation is an entire academic field to be studied :)
In addition, if you have enough receivers you can use that to run something called MLAT [1] to also pick up GA aircraft that just have a transponder but no GPS. The more the merrier.
[1] https://adsbx.discourse.group/t/multilateration-mlat-how-it-...
Why? Was anybody harmed?
Hopefully they don't find out who did this. There was never any danger, and without this kind of joke, the world would be less fun.
(Obviously it should be harder to fool critical systems, so this served also as a warning, but if you want to attack such a system, a real bad guy would do this in more subtle ways.)
See https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html... for non-radar ATC procedures.
I do not understand what the upside is, aside from saving a tiny amount of effort and cost -- they could get the same data with more reliability by just running their own ADS-B receiver, without having a dependency on a third-party.
Setting up an ADS-B receiver is indeed very cheap. Less than 100$. That's what many people, both aviation enthusiasts and ham radio operators, do for fun.
The problem is, do that on an airport? You'll now need permits to install the antenna (needs to be covered in the lightning protection system and even if it's just a passive receiver probably someone needs to sign off on an antenna being added). Fire code means you'll need approval and specialized people to run the cable (you need to drill holes in fire walls). Maybe there's some law or regulation requiring approval or causing a paper trail (e.g. in Germany, all electrical appliances have to be isolation-tested and visually inspected every two years by an electrician). Doing that the proper way is an awful lot of work. And by that point, someone will notice "hey, a Raspberry Pi? An RTL-SDR stick from eBay? No way that is certified to be used in a safety critical environment", killing off the project or requiring a certified device costing orders of magnitude more money.
In contrast, a privately owned laptop, tablet or phone with the Flightaware app? No one will give a shit about it unless someone relies on FA too much, causes an incident and that is found out.
The problem is, you need to have a good height for the antenna - "height is might" in radio, particularly above VHF bands. I actually can see this with my own ADS-B receiver - I'm in a valley and precisely can see that effect when plotting received packets.
It's not something halfway critical to the operation–why would the FAA allow that? ADS-B Exchange is not run by volunteers–it's run by employees of JETNET LLC, an aviation intelligence company. Doing it yourself almost certainly gives you less information–you're not part of a global network of receivers. It almost certainly gives you less reliability–receivers in the big networks typically have a fair amount of overlap which gives redundancy your single receiver doesn't have.
It's also not FAA approved!
They could get uncensored data too - you dont want billionaires jets crashing into other planes because they didnt want to be tracked.
We now have to both identify obama judges, trump judges and trump bootlickers.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-...
There it is. Someone running a fake feeder uploaded fake data. No spoofed signals were actually sent over the radio.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fjqtAa2qgcWsJvFfA
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.680&lon=-...
Then CPR decode them into latitude/longitude....plus plot enough spoofed positions so the point cloud forms a QR code like raster on the map, then scan the rendered pattern...you get a URL to the unredacted Epstein files.
Spamming flightaware is much less severe, but still... it's not cute to mess with life-safety critical infrastructure.
Everthing seems to be domestic terrorism in the US these days.
What's almost more frightening is how many people actually buy it.
So I think the tide has long ago shifted, which makes sense what with the terror gangs executing Americans and all. The question is how we can organize into meaningful opposition when most activity happens online these days, and every non-echo-chamber forum still has extremist nutjobs who derail productive conversation.
I'd think that Congressional offices are seeing a similar dynamic too, inundated with robocalls from "constituents", the occasional untraceable threat of violence to their families if they step out of line, etc.
Yassified Vance, which a Republican congressman actually created and posted as a legit fan edit is also very funny: https://x.com/KatAbughazaleh/status/1841491297145634831
Oh I thought that was the angry little man, what's his name... Ben Shapiro! (Google knew what I meant.)
The spoofer could have just sent them fake location information drawing an image using latitude, longitude and altitude for color (in the default view flight paths have different colors based on the altitude of the plane at that point in time).
They could have built an antenna and actually broadcast this data, but that would be a lot more effort and most likely some form of crime.
They didn't actually "broadcast" anything. This was created by uploading fake data to absexchange.
Someone spoofed Airforce One's transponder, had it declare itself as "VANCE 1", and then fly a pattern to display the meme. Or lied to one or more of the major sites, pretending to be listening in on the ADS-B signals. It's unclear. Regardless, it's a very funny hack.
That said, TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) does not operate on flight data reported by ADS-B.
Viewable on FlightRadar24, etc
It is on Airplanes.live ADSB,FI,and TheAirTraffic.com. Isn't on adsb.lol or FlightRadar24.
on HN, mostly
hugged but someone caught it: https://archive.is/VrEtg
It would be far better and more reliable to have the FAA do it by providing authoritative single source of truth as (selectively) open data rather than depend upon the whims / greed / sloppiness of an over-privatized utility. ATCs need and/or have this data anyhow, so in the future, it should be provided.
How do less neoliberal European countries do it?
> It's analogous to "hobby" code running key infrastructure of the internet
I have some bad news my dude lol
Anyone can receive it, and many do. FlightRadar and others have networks of people with receivers that forward all received packets to central servers.
The aircraft self-report location, heading, altitude, etc, so anyone can transmit packets making ghost planes.
I am somewhat surprised nobody has stashed an ADS-B spoofer near ATL or AMS that just broadcasts tracks of A380 tail numbers crossing the runways perpendicular at 500 ft AGL or something. They have primary radar, sure, but I imagine there would still be a temporary disruption until people figured out what was going on.
I think this is the first case I’ve seen of ADS-B spoofing in the wild.
EDIT: this was spoofed reports to the data aggregators via the internet, not broadcast on radio waves. I’ve still never seen or heard tell of RF ADS-B spoofing.
Probably because the required expertise, effort, risk, and reward ratios don't work out. You can cause a minor disturbance that isn't particularly visible and in exchange get investigated by the FBI. Seems about as wise as attempting to graffiti the front gate of a military base.
Can you tell me more about the fake signals? Who sends them? Why? How often?
(IIUC they did not actually transmit data, just fed it directly into an ADS-B receiver, but transmitting would've been trivial at this point)
I think the API is secured? The entire premise is that a volunteer creates an account and uploads ADS-B telemetry. Detecting falsified data is a separate matter.
Also Adsbexchange has had some… history:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/10l2euc/adsb_exchange...
https://hackaday.com/2023/01/26/ads-b-exchange-sells-up-cont...
"The Government’s interpretation of the statute would attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity,” Barrett wrote. “If the ‘exceeds authorized access’ clause criminalizes every violation of a computer-use policy, then millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens are criminals."
adsbexchange is a user-generated content platform where you can submit decoded radio signals to a common database. Sending fake data to adsbexchange is as much a CFAA violation as posting hoaxes to Wikipedia or a social media platform.
Assuming the FAA has the authority to enforce ADSB requirements (an open question post-Chevron), I can’t find any regulation saying non-aircrafts cannot transmit ADSB. Only ones saying aircrafts in certain categories must.
There’s probably some non-interference requirement somewhere (FCC spectrum licensing perhaps), but I’m not seeing it immediately.
All this is in the hypothetical that RF was transmitted, which as others point out it probably wasn’t.
Whatever transmitter you're using would not be type-accepted for operation on the 1080 MHz or 978 MHz band. (47 USC § 301)
Additionally, RF operation with the intent of willful interference is inherently illegal. (47 USC § 333)
Also does impersonation necessarily qualify as interference? Naively, I'd expect interference to refer to jamming.
This is easily-prosecutable willful interference or possibly aircraft sabotage: ADS-B operates in licensed bands and uses an already highly-contended modulation scheme and transmission protocol.