Posted on 07/13/2006 8:19:37 AM PDT by Magnum44
US Cracks Europe GPS Satellite Codes
Brussels (UPI) Jul 11, 2006
U.S. scientists have reportedly cracked the European Union's secret satellite navigation codes. The codes, to be used by the EU's Galileo satellite system, casts doubt the $4.2 billion project will pay for itself through commercial fees, The London Telegraph reported Tuesday. Cornell University Professor Mark Psiaki said he and colleagues cracked the coded data being beamed to Earth by a prototype orbiting satellite.
That, The Telegraph said, is potentially devastating for the EU, which wants to charge high-tech firms license fees to access that data, before they can make and sell compatible navigation devices to the public.
Galileo is to be a European rival to the United States' military-controlled GPS system, which supplies signals without charge. Galileo's designers, however, say it will be more accurate than GPS.
The European Commission said Monday Cornell's success in cracking codes for the prototype is irrelevant, since the final Galileo codes will be different.
Galileo, due to be operational by 2010, is a joint venture of the European Commission, the European Space Agency and private investors, including an arm of the Chinese government.
Source: United Press International
ROFL! And I hear there's a DaVinci diet -- I want that code too.
Saved your marriage? Mine, too. Hah!
Have you named yours yet? Our Garmin 2720 is "Audrey"
dung.
That inane statement is even funnier if you read it aloud with a disdainful French accent.
I think that the improvement would stem from using more accurate atomic clocks.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/534/1gen masers
See also my article on who invented GPS.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/626/1
Step two of this process, once the EU system is operational, will be for the eurotwits to ban the sale and possesion of the US models.
It's not, it's open source code, that's the agreement, the EU taxes it by charging users for a key... Not part of the original agreement. The article is crap and is misleading.
I seriously question the accuracy issue.
GPS can get you to within 1 cubic centimeter. Cubic, not square! You can determine where you are within ONE centimeter in THREE dimensions.
Sure... you can probably be more theoretically accurate, but what's the practical application?
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/521790/?sc=rsla
Members of Cornell's Global Positioning System (GPS) Laboratory have cracked the so-called pseudo random number (PRN) codes of Europe's first global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codes secret. That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices -- including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles -- that need PRNs to listen to satellites.
Because GPS satellites, which were put into orbit by the Department of Defense, are funded by U.S. taxpayers, the signal is free -- consumers need only purchase a receiver. Galileo, on the other hand, must make money to reimburse its investors -- presumably by charging a fee for PRN codes. Because Galileo and GPS will share frequency bandwidths, Europe and the United States signed an agreement whereby some of Galileo's PRN codes must be "open source." Nevertheless, after broadcasting its first signals on Jan. 12, 2006, none of GIOVE-A's codes had been made public.
They only broke the pseudo random number generator to allow the use of the open source Galileo PRN codes...
I realize I misread your original statement. Didn't mean to correct where it was not necessary.
FRegards,
You need DGPS to get cm accuracy. The basic open service is ~10 meters. The precise service is an order of mag better, and DGPS is an order of mag better still.
That doesn't make a lot of sense. The code that was cracked was on the reception side. It's not as if the hackers were able to tell the satellite to transmit bad information.
This is comparable to decrypting the subscription-only signal from a satellite TV service. The fact that you can now read the signal has no effect on what the legitimate subscribers see on their TV screen.
Different, but as easily cracked.
If you know the tracking code, you can replicate it and false data from a fake source, causing a receiver to be fooled into thinking its tracking a satellite when its tracking the fake transmitter. Result, a bogus nav solution that looks legit.
Like meaconing.
I stand corrected. My points of reference were 1) using GPS in the military to get 12 digit grids in 2 dimensions and 2) a Discovery channel feature on a bridge built in France in which they used GPS to build to a point in space above the river channel. They made the point several times that they were building towards a point in space that they'd calculated via GPS to within 1-cm accuracy. As I recall, they built it to within 3 inches of where they wanted to build it - pretty damn close for such a big project.
The thing is no one wants to send out false DirecTV signals. But ending out false GPS signals is a lot more of a resonable problem.
Space based orbital mind control lasers, targeting specific neuron clusters in the brain.
Dont think they cared. Those of us who are in this type of business have always thought the EU system was redundant at best, and never made sense from a business perspective. But the EU and its financiers did not ever care about that. They want to compete with the US system to show that they are not reliant upon us, and to have access to the precision solutions. I suppose there are those on the US/GPS side who would root for the failure of the EU system, because that would deny potential adversaries of a precision nav system (useful for guided bombs and missiles). Being able to crack it may be equally as good, because we can exploit anyone who relies on it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.