Jamming and spoofingDevices that use satellite navigation systems, such as the US-government owned Global Positioning System (GPS), function by receiving signals from multiple satellites orbiting the Earth and using them to calculate a precise location.But the signal is weaker the closer it is to the ground, making it easy and cheap to jam with more powerful signals, leaving any GPS-reliant drones helpless.Hamas fighters have been doing just that, prompting Israeli soldiers to secure their mini-UAVs with InfiniDome’s GPSdome2 technology, which first came out in March 2023.”We started delivering it to a couple of customers but actually, our first real production batch came more or less in September,” Sharar told AFP.In one sense, it was “perfect timing,” with employees deployed as part of Israel’s response to the October 7 attack, he said.”A third of us got drafted immediately to reserve forces because we have UAV operators here. We have officers working in the company,” he said.Chief executive Sharar and the company’s chief technical officer were not among them but set themselves to work as part of the war effort.”Both of us got into the company on Saturday (October 7) and we started doing final testing and packing up GPSdome2 and we started distributing them,” he added.As well as defending its own GPS use, Israel has taken measures to disrupt the GPS of Hamas and other opponents.The specialist site gpsjam.org, which compiles geolocation signal disruption data based on aircraft data reports, reported a low level of disruption around Gaza on October 7.But the next day, disturbances increased around the Palestinian territory and also along the border between Israel and Lebanon in the north.The Israeli army said in the following days that it disrupted GPS “in a proactive manner for various operational needs.”It warned of “various and temporary effects on location-based applications.”One AFP journalist on Abraham Lincoln Street in Jerusalem, for example, appeared as being in Nasr City, Cairo, on Google Maps.Another in the West Bank city of Jenin was listed as being at Beirut airport on the navigation app Waze.
Source link
