Navigating Vulnerabilities: Cyber Security Threats and the Future of GNSS

In April 2024, Finnair was forced to suspend all flights to Tartu, Estonia, for nearly a month due to disruptions affecting its navigation systems attributed to Russia. This incident illustrates the underestimated vulnerability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), particularly across the Black Sea, the Baltic region, and the Middle East.

In the PSIA Tech & Global Affairs Innovation Hub's new policy brief, Navigating Vulnerabilities: Cyber Security Threats and the Future of GNSS, Kezia Wexøe-Mikkelsen, analyst with Danish think tank EUROPA, sheds light on the invisible fragilities of GNSS, how attacks are already carried out, how they could cost billions of dollars, and which policies may enhance the security and resilience of these infrastructures providing us Positioning, Navigation and Timing services.

The paper describes the current technological, functional, and governance fragmentation between the four major systems currently shaping global infrastructure: Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's GLONASS, the European Galileo, and Chinese BeiDou. The author then provides an overview of the intensifying threats (jamming, spoofing, and anti-satellite ASAT weapons), the limited integration of anti-interference capabilities, and the rising geopolitical tensions making GNSS even more brittle. 

In an effort to provide immediate and longer term responses, this policy brief brings together, on the one hand, the existing and forthcoming technologies mitigating or remediating these weaknesses, including interference-proof receivers, quantum-based navigation technologies, advanced cryptographic protections, and, on the other hand, the international efforts meant to support the development and availability of these technologies. It concludes on the legal and regulatory avenues at hand to scale these solutions and improve GNSS resilience through greater international collaboration, with concrete recommendations such as:

• expanding collaborative testing and simulations on GNSS vulnerabilities,
• collectively increasing investment in GNSS resilience,
• Re-orienting space governance initiatives to address emerging threats,
• strengthening security-oriented interoperability between systems,
• harmonizing cross-border regulations and standards,
• reinforcing international control over jamming, spoofing and ASAT technologies.

While an outage of GPS would cost an estimated 1 billion USD per day to the USA alone, this policy brief crucially contributes to unveiling the current fragility of GNSS and outlines the necessary collective efforts we ought to make to preserve a critical infrastructure mostly invisible to us.

We invite you to read the whole policy brief: Navigating Vulnerabilities: Cyber Security Threats and the Future of GNSS (PDF, 514 KB)