Hardening of GNSS based trackers : final report ; an exploratory research project on options concerning more resilient position reporting devices

Civilian GNSS based real-time tracking systems are presently used in a number of fields, such as the fisheries Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), the maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS), and the transportation of dangerous goods. Such trackers are commonly composed of a GNSS receiver module and a communications module for transmission of positions. These GNSS-based trackers are vulnerable to tampering. Modelling such trackers, one identifies multiple ways that an adversary could use to introduce false tracking information. This document summarises an array of vulnerabilities and options for hardening such trackers, such as against fake GNSS signals, physical tampering, side channel attacks, and the substitution of position reports.