India says some air flights near capital faced 'GPS spoofing'

NEW DELHI

Some air flights faced global positioning systems (GPS) spoofing near the capital New Delhi, the Indian government said on Monday.

The Civil Aviation Ministry, in a written statement, told parliament that flights reported the problem while “using GPS-based landing procedures," when it was approaching runway 10 at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), and “contingency procedures” were employed.

The statement came in response to a question by lawmaker S. Niranjan Reddy, who asked whether the government was aware of recent incidents of GPS spoofing at the airport.

According to the ministry, the Airports Authority of India has requested the country's Wireless Monitoring Organization (WMO) “to possibly identify the source of interference/ spoofing.”

The government directed the WMO to “mobilize more resources to identify the source of spoofing based on approximate spoofing location details shared,” the ministry said.

The ministry said instances of "GPS jamming/spoofing" were being received by the authorities since November 2023.

“GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) interference reports are being received from Kolkata, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai airports,” it added.

According to the US-based Stanford University, a GPS spoofing attack attempts to “deceive a GPS receiver by broadcasting counterfeit GPS signals, structured to resemble a set of normal GPS signals, or by rebroadcasting genuine signals captured elsewhere or at a different time.”

Apart from India, several other countries have reported similar incidents. In September, a sharp rise in GPS jamming was observed over the Baltic Sea.