Gnss spoofing attacks threaten smartphone location accuracy and defenses
GNSS Spoofing in Mobile Devices: A Survey on Impact and Countermeasures
Cryptography and Security
Summary
Smartphones use satellite signals to find out where they are, but these signals are weak and easy to trick. Some attackers can send fake signals that make phones think they are somewhere else, which can cause problems for apps and services that rely on accurate location. The authors review how these fake signal attacks work on phones and what methods could help detect or block them, focusing on what is possible given the limits of phone hardware. They also compare different approaches to help developers choose the best way to protect users.
What this means in practice
- •For mobile app developers: Develop location-aware apps that can detect or mitigate fake satellite signals using smartphone-suitable security techniques surveyed here.
- •For mobile device security teams: Design defenses against GNSS spoofing attacks that respect the resource and hardware limitations of smartphones to protect user location data.
A survey. It maps existing work.
Authors
Robert Argo, Andrea Nardin, Alex Minetto, Pau Closas
Abstract
Smartphones rely on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based positioning for many of the functions they execute everyday. The GNSS receivers embedded in smartphones are susceptible to anthropogenic radio frequency interference attacks in the forms of jamming and spoofing due to the low-power and open-architecture signals they receive from the satellite constellations. While jamming is a practice that denies a GNSS receiver the ability to form a position, velocity, and time (PVT) solution, spoofing represents a more insidious threat by using forged satellite signals that aim at causing the victim receiver to compute a false PVT solution. The ubiquity of smartphones and the sensitive geolocation data they hold make them a primary target for malicious spoofing. However, their hardware constraints and the lack of deep visibility into the GNSS receiver processing chain create significant hurdles for effective countermeasures. Existing surveys comprehensively explore general spoofing countermeasures but fail to address these mobile-specific limitations. This article fills that gap with a novel survey focused on techniques viable within the unique constraints of smartphone architectures. Specifically, we establish a taxonomy for defining GNSS spoofing attack effects and countermeasures, provide a historical review of smartphone vulnerability characterization, and provide an overview of techniques proposed to detect and counteract smartphone spoofing threats, offering a comparative framework to weigh their respective pros and cons on mobile platforms.