GPS spoofing targets IGIA, hours after Rubio lands in Delhi

New Delhi: Barely hours after US secretary of state Marco Rubio landed in Delhi on Saturday, the capital’s IGI Airport again became the target of GPS spoofing.

About 10 to 12 aircraft nearing the airport on Saturday evening and night reported the menace, seen on this scale after a few months. Govt agencies are probing the sudden recurrence of GPS spoofing — a cyberattack where counterfeit radio signals are transmitted to override genuine satellite signals — and that too at the time of a VVIP visit.

Air traffic control immediately increased the spacing between incoming aircraft to allow more time for guiding them safely to the airport using radar vectors. This resulted in congestion and some flight delays.

“When spoofing happens, we switch to pre-GPS days of flying, which means flying from point to point instead of going straight for the destination. This means greater surveillance on the position of planes,” said air traffic controllers.

Below 14,000 feet, aircraft headed to Delhi normally have a separation of 3 nautical miles. On Saturday night, it was increased to 5 nm. “This affects capacity as Delhi can normally handle 42 arrivals in an hour. The number falls to about 30 or so when aircraft have to be flown in using radar vectors or without GPS,” the air traffic controllers said.

Broadly speaking, airliners face two types of GPS issues — jamming done usually by militaries in war zones to avoid giving away location of military assets, including aircraft; and spoofing by troublemakers in conflict zones, starting from Pakistan to West Asia, Turkey and Ukraine, to confuse pilots. Spoofing leads to corrupting GPS signals, resulting in a pilot getting a wrong indication about his location: up to 2,500 km away from the actual spot.