Cyber Defense eMagazine March Edition for 2022

staggering number of critical systems necessary for modern life are wholly dependent on GPS
with no other primary standards traceable source for accurate time.
Other countries have deployed their own systems such as BeiDou (China) and GLONASS
(Russia). Today’s threat analysts are aware that being 100% dependent on space-based
systems with no other PNT alternative leaves America’s national security profoundly vulnerable
to a wide variety of attackers. Single person local attacks and nation-state threats are easily
conceived.
This leads to the question, “What is the likelihood of our GPS system failing?” The possibility of
a system-wide failure is remote. But the impact of such a failure is incalculable. The reality is
that GPS satellite signals are vulnerable, not only to space weather, missiles, space debris and
general wear and tear, but also to bad actors on the ground via spoofing and jamming. If we
continue to rely exclusively on GPS it will remain an attractive attack surface because nearly all
modern systems depend on it as a source of coordinated universal time.
Many analysts see such an exploitation as a matter of when, not if. Bad actors – any
cybersecurity adversary interested in attacking IT systems – may harness a spoofing attack, an
intelligent form of interference which makes the receiver unusable or worse by making it believe
it is at a false location. Even traditional means of intentional interference such as jamming can
still jeopardize GPS transmissions as effectively as they did to international broadcasting
stations during the Cold War.
Alarmingly, successful satellite hacking has already occurred multiple times over that last 20
years and was first noted as far back as in 1998 when hackers took control of the U.S.-German
ROSAT X-Ray satellite. Over the years, hacking became more prevalent with two more
successful attacks, believed to be led by China in 2008 and 2018. In response to the growing
amount of threats, specifically from Russia, China and Iran, the U.S created the Space Force in
2019, specifically designed to operate and defend military satellites and ground stations that
provide communications, navigation and Earth observation. While enhancing the profile of these
initiatives is a step in the right direction, a more robust strategy is needed to ensure accurate
PNT in case threats slip through new security measures. An equally dependable and ubiquitous
source of position and time is the best way to minimize the attractiveness of the GPS system as
an attack vector. eLORAN is the perfect tool to fill this role in any nation’s security.
Enhanced Loran (eLORAN) is a positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service for use by
many modes of transport and a secure source of time for countless systems critical to everyday
life. eLORAN is terrestrial based, meaning that instead of low power signals beamed from space,
it utilizes much higher power transmitters which are difficult and expensive to jam. It is fully
independent from GPS because it provides an independent source of accurate location and time
traceable to a national time standard.
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