Hacking ILS

Yes. The challenge is to do it such that the monitoring equipment does not detect it.

You also need a bit of power. Way more than for GPS jamming.

Peter wrote:

Yes. The challenge is to do it such that the monitoring equipment does not detect it.

It would probably be quicker and easier to shoot down the aircraft.

This came up on reddit.com/r/flying a few days ago – basically it’s clickbait.

It’s just a variation on “X can hack Y with a computer!”, which has always been possible, but the new “with a computer” is added for clickbait scares.

None of what these “researchers” found hasn’t been possible since the 1950s or whenever ILS/localisers were invented. All the guff about the signals being “unencrypted”, actually – they are purely analogue and don’t carry any data anyway – the ILS basically works by comparing the signal strength of two overlapping directional signals.

Then the whole scary “you can do it with a $600 SDR” – well, you could have done the SDR bit with $5 worth of parts from any radio amateur’s parts bin for the last 60+ years, the fact no one has shows that it’s a bit pointless. To expand a bit on the “OMG on an SDR!” clickbait part of the article, cheap SDRs can’t transmit at all, and more expensive ones (such as the LimeSDR that I have on my desk) have truly feeble output powers. Even the $10,000 Ettus USRP has output of a few milliwatts. They aren’t going to interfere with anything without an RF linear amp with a reasonable gain (which can’t be bought off the shelf for the air navigation bands, so whoever’s doing it is going to need sufficient radio knowledge to either construct their own amplifier or modify an existing one – which means they never needed the SDR in the first place). The ILS is also comprised of directional antennas, so there’s an awful lot of antenna gain our would-be “hacker” has to overcome, too – and if the hacker decides to do that by building a yagi with sufficient gain, it’s going to need several people to get the damned thing assembled onto a mast to be able to point it at anything.

And then the crew are probably going to notice that stuff doesn’t cross check during their approach (that’s if the LOC or GS doesn’t flag anyway, which it’s quite likely to in the first place). And it won’t exactly be subtle either – you’re going to be “foxhunted” by the guy from Ofcom in pretty short order.

If you really want to cause chaos around an airport it’s cheaper to just use a drone. Or just report a drone that isn’t even there.

Allegedly, a spoofed navaid (VOR rather than ILS, but it hardly makes a difference) was used back in 1986 to bring down the plane carrying Samora Machel, the president of Mozambique.