Monday, August 17, 2015

GPS Hacking



I heard a report from the recent Def Con conference (where hackers share some of their latest exploits) on the latest Daily Tech News Show podcast that I think will interest all of you.

Apparently, hacking into GPS is not too hard.  Using GPS only requires receiving signals from the GPS satellites, not sending anything out.  So if you can send false signals to someone’s phone, you can really mess with their directions. You can get their map system to tell them to keep turning right and go around and around in circles.

Also, because GPS only requires receiving signals, you can use GPS in airplane mode.  Imagine watching a zoomed in map where you are traveling at 400 miles per hour.  Zipping across the screen. 

This also means you can use airplane mode when running or in some other context where you want to use GPS but also want to conserve battery life.  Here is something we can all use.

Almost makes me wish I had a few hacking skills.  Almost.