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| Science & Technology | |
| Spoofing AIS to Conceal Commercial Ship Locations Worldwide | |
| 2022-09-04 | |
The scrappy oil tanker waited to load fuel at a dilapidated jetty projecting from a giant Venezuelan refinery on a December morning. A string of abandoned ships listed in the surrounding turquoise Caribbean waters, a testament to the country’s decay after years of economic hardships and U.S. sanctions. Yet, on computer screens, the ship — called Reliable — appeared nearly 300 nautical miles away, drifting innocuously off the coast of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. According to Reliable’s satellite location transmissions, the ship had not been to Venezuela in at least a decade. Shipping data researchers have identified hundreds of cases like Reliable, where a ship has transmitted fake location coordinates in order to carry out murky and even illegal business operations and circumvent international laws and sanctions. The digital mirage — enabled by a spreading technology — could transform how goods are moved around the world, with profound implications for the enforcement of international law, organized crime and global trade. Tampering this way with satellite location trackers carried by large ships is illegal under international law, and until recently, most fleets are believed to have largely followed the rules. But over the past year, Windward, a large maritime data company that provides research to the United Nations, has uncovered more than 500 cases of ships manipulating their satellite navigation systems to hide their locations. The vessels carry out the deception by adopting a technology that until recently was confined to the world’s most advanced navies. The technology, in essence, replicates the effect of a VPN cellphone app, making a ship appear to be in one place, while physically being elsewhere. Its use has included Chinese fishing fleets hiding operations in protected waters off South America, tankers concealing stops in Iranian oil ports, and container ships obfuscating journeys in the Middle East. A U.S. intelligence official, who discussed confidential government assessments on the condition of anonymity, said the deception tactic had already been used for weapons and drug smuggling. After originally discovering the deception near countries under sanction, Windward has since seen it spread as far as Australia and Antarctica. “It’s a new way for ships to transmit a completely different identity,” said Matan Peled, a founder of Windward. “Things have unfolded at just an amazing and frightening speed.” Under a United Nations maritime resolution signed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, all large ships must carry and operate satellite transponders, known as automatic identification systems, or AIS, which transmit a ship’s identification and navigational positional data. The resolution’s signatories, which include practically all seafaring nations, are obligated under the U.N. rules to enforce these guidelines within their jurisdictions. The spread of AIS manipulation shows how easy it has become to subvert its underlying technology — the Global Positioning System, or GPS — which is used in everything from cellphones to power grids, said Dana Goward, a former senior U.S. Coast Guard official and the president of Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a Virginia-based GPS policy group. “This shows just how vulnerable the system is,” he said. Mr. Goward said that until now, all major global economy players had a stake in upholding an order built on satellite navigation systems. But rising tensions between the West, Russia and China could be changing that. “We could be moving toward a point of inflection,” Mr. Goward said. Analysts and Western security officials say the U.S. and European Union sanctions on Russian energy imports as a result of the war in Ukraine could drive Russia’s trade underground in coming months, obscuring shipments of even permitted goods in and out of the country. A large shadow economy risks escalating maritime deception and interference to unprecedented levels. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that the spread of AIS manipulation is a growing national security problem, and a common technique among sanctioned countries. But China has also emerged in recent years as a source of some of the most sophisticated examples of AIS manipulation, officials said, and the country goes to great lengths to conceal the illegal activities of its large fishing industry. | |
| Posted by:Slenter Panda4300 |
| #2 Checkout VESSEL FINDER LOCATOR |
| Posted by: NN2N1 2022-09-04 17:37 |
| #1 How many times do we need to discover that trust should not be extended to peoples and nations until it is earned? Trust but verify is not racist or insulting, just prudent. Someone needs to tattoo that on the forehead of every Department of State employee above GS-7. That includes the naive assumption that widely used technology is immune to manipulation by those with whom you would never trust with your daughter! My personal list includes most of the known world, all of Iran, Pakistan and Communist China, and a majority of Democrats here at home. Even acouple of my grandkids are a bit sketchy |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2022-09-04 12:41 |