XC TrikerAir Creation Tanarg 80hp BioniX 15M
0O2, 0O4, 0S5, 0Q5, 14S, 1O3, 3S8, 3W5, 9S3, A39, AVENAL, CALIFORNIA VALLEY, CN12, CYQS, DIXON, FOT, Headquarters, ID85, K1O3, K3O1, K3O8, KAST, KAVX (Catalina Island), KAWO, KBOK, through KBUR, KC80, KCCB, KCMA, KDAG, El Mirage Dry Lake & Flying J Ranch-El Mirage, KFHR, Over LAX midfield & LAX school, KFUL, KGCD, KHAF, KHRI, KINW, KIYK, KIZA, KKIC, KL52, KLGD, KLKV, KLPC, KLSN, KLVK, KMPI, KMRY, through KNTD, KO22, KOKB, KONP, KORS, KOXR, KPGA, KPRB, KRBG, KRBL, KRNM, KSBA, KSBP, KSDM, KSHN, KSMO, KSMX, KSNS, KSZP, KSZT, KTOA, KUAO, KUKI, low pass KVBG, KWHP, KWVI, KZPH, L06, L08, L09, L61, MATANCHEN, Monument Valley, NV74, Dry Lakes, O46, O69, Over KLAX, PHHN, PHDH, S16, S51, S89, SALTON Sea x3, Slab City, Stocking Meadows, through KSEA, A few that won't be mentioned (OR/MX/Sltn), Through TRONA GAP, UT25, WA09, Yosemite, 49X, KHII, L62, L17, KFCH, KCVH, CA66, KOAR KSFF 73S 72S S94 KPUW S68 Bill's Ranch S27 KGPI (Glacier) 58S 2MT1 53U 8S1 7S0 52S S09 S34 KTHM S83 KDEW, L88 (New Cuyama "X"d- low pass), KRIR (FlaBob), L35 (Big Bear), KSBD (KTOA <->San Bernadino @ NIGHT ! :) L45, KBFL, L05, O26, Over Mt Whitney Summit at 17,200', L73, KMIT, L19, L84, KOXR, P20, L54, KFUL (Trike Lecture), KCLR, YYWG YCOR YHAY YIVO YWTO YMIA YBRN YDLQ YTOC YPOK YWGT
~ 166 Airports, Fields, or off road (4 Countries- hopefully more soon :)
If you put all your airports/off airports on SkyVector, you can make a cool map of the places you've been. These are mine:
In North American Continent (US, Mex, Canada, Hawaii)
In AUSTRALIA (MegaFauna 2014, etc)
ALL (get's a little crowded in this view)
Ghost Planes Clouding the Skies!? Could air traffic control be the Next Generation of attacks from hackers?
From: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Ghost-Planes-Clouding-the-Skies-179679721.html
Wth Video
Dozens of airplanes flying across an air traffic controller’s monitoring screen. Some are real. Others not. There’s no way for a controller to know the difference.
That’s the hacking scenario many aviation experts warn could become a reality with adoption of a new method of tracking air traffic control.
Called NextGen, it is a system of tracking and guiding airplanes using satellite based technology much like the GPS used in automobiles on the roads today.
As part of the NextGen system, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to transition away from of using ground-based radar imaging to monitor air traffic and replace it with the GPS satellite based technology known as ADS-B.
ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance which uses a large radio frequency bandwidth that supports bi-directional datalinks, (ADS-B “in” and ADS-B “out”).
The FAA says this use ADS-B “in” and “out” as part of the NextGen system will save travelers time, improve safety, and make flying more efficient.
It has set a deadline of the year 2020 for all airplanes and airports to adopt NextGen technology full time.
However, some experts within the aviation community warn that the ASD-B technology behind NextGen is not secure and vulnerable to attacks from computer hackers.
And those experts say those attacks could potentially have a disruptive impact on airports and airspace across the country.
Computer hacker Nick Foster is one of those critics who claims to have exposed how ADS-B’s unencrypted signals can present a security concern, absent any other safeguards.
“We can prove without actually flying planes into the air traffic control system that it is actually possible to create these signals,” Foster told NBC Bay Area.
Foster designed a simulation to demonstrate how easy it would be for a hacker to spoof ADS-B signals and inject ghost planes into real time air traffic monitors.
DOCUMENTS
Exploring Potential ADS-B Vulnerabilities in the FAA's Nextgen Air Transportation System
On insecurity of ADS-B protocol and practical attacks on ADS-B devices
“I am far from the only one out there who has the skills, so in that sense it is very concerning, because I am one of the good guys, because I think it is fun to do this stuff. If I can do it somebody else can,” Foster said.
NextGen technology is already being used on a trial basis in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In March, FAA Acting Administrator Michael Huerta promoted the advantages of the NextGen technology at Oakland International Airport’s air traffic control tower.
“What we really want people to understand is NextGen is right now. There are things that we are doing that are improving the use of the airspace that will result a lot of benefit right away,” Huerta said.
The goal of NextGen, according to the FAA, is to create a more modern, precise tracing system where air traffic control will operate more safely and efficiently throughout the United States.
Despite outside concerns, the agency maintains that the risk to national airspace due to spoofing or injecting ghost flights would be no greater than the risk with the use of radar systems that are employed today.
Still, critics of NextGen would like the FAA to reveal what specific security measures the agency plans to employ that will protect against ghost flights.
USEFUL LINKS
Hackers + Airplanes No Good Can Come Of This
Spoofing ADS-B
On insecurity of ADS-B protocol and practical attacks on ADS-B devices
Canadian computer hacker Brad Haines began looking into ADS-B security as a hobby and found similar security flaws to the ones found by other hackers such as Nick Foster.
In fact, Haines and Foster teamed up to present their findings at a recent underground computer hacking conference in Las Vegas.
“Just to make myself feel safe, I started doing this research to try to prove to myself that it is safe and so far I have failed miserably,” Haines told NBC Bay Area via Skype.
Haines says that he and Foster publicly demonstrated their hack of the ADS-B tracking system in order to call attention to what a potential terrorist could do if the problem is not fixed before NextGen becomes fully operational.
“As a hacker ‘unauthenticated’ and ‘unencrypted’ are two very bad words to use on something as important as air traffic control,” said Haines. They are both words used often in the public literature surrounding NextGen’s technology.
“This is where it (NextGen’s current system) starts getting concerning,” said Haines, “because if 50 extra flights pop up on the air traffic controllers’ display, what are they going to do?”
And it isn’t just the computer hackers who are concerned. Several studies conducted by independent researchers appear to validate Haines and Foster’s claims.
A recent article published in the fall 2012 issue of the Journal of Aviation and Aerospace Perspectives demonstrates in startling detail how someone could alter live data from air traffic control towers or inject dozens of ghost airplanes in the skies all over the country.
Air Force Major Donald McCallie authored a thesis paper at the Department of Air Force’s Air University outlining similar security concerns. In his study, McCallie described how terrorists sitting in vans near major airports could disrupt the entire nation’s air traffic and even jeopardize air passenger safety by inserting ghost planes into the system.
There are other academic and scientific studies on this issue, all raising almost identical security concerns.
These concerns have also gotten the attention of those who hold the purse strings on Capitol Hill.
Republican congressman John Mica of Orlando, is the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, which oversees the FAA and its implementation of NextGen.
“Our committee evaluates the progress and we would have to give it a D minus,” Mica told NBC Bay Area.
Congressman Mica has been closely monitoring the progress of NextGen and admits that he is not pleased with the fact that the plan is four years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget and still is surrounded by questions over its security.
“Every day is a new adventure in this because of hackers and people who are trying to enter our system through cyber security breaches,” said Chairman Mica. “It is a constant evolutionary process that you’ve always got to be one step ahead of the bad guys on. So that is a threat (to NextGen).”
FAA officials would not discuss this issue on camera with NBC Bay Area.
However spokesman Ian Gregor told NBC Bay Area in a statement that the agency is aware of these and other potential risks.
The FAA has a thorough process in place to ensure the safety and security of the ADS-B system by identifying and mitigating possible risks, such as intentional jamming. The agency conducts ongoing assessments of potential ADS-B signal vulnerabilities and we require continual, independent validation of the accuracy and reliability of ADS-B and aircraft avionics signals. The air traffic system is based on redundancies to ensure safe and secure operations. The FAA plans to maintain about half of the current network of secondary radars as a backup to ADS-B in the unlikely event it is needed.
Every critic we spoke with and every research paper we found asked the same question: How is the FAA going to guard against such an attack on NextGen? How can the public be assured that the system can’t be compromised without publicly publishing authentication procedures and systems?
Thus far, the FAA has not given detailed answers that satisfies their concerns to those issues.
Comments
There has been talk about doing away with Air Traffic Controllers and just use electronic tools to manage the "system". This would be another reason not to do away with controllers.
Common sense and reasoning is possibly the only way to detect a "ghost" target on radar. That little "itch" in the controllers mind that senses that everything is not allright and leads him/her to investigate further before assuming validity.
When the FAA rolled out ARTS in the 70's we had all kinds of problems with false targets. What concerns me is that this new seperation tool (not radar anymore) is GPS satellite based technology. How many times have we all lost satellite signal to our car GPS while traveling in a storm. If there is ever a time that you need good information on your monitoring screen, it is in a storm. "The air traffic system is based on redundancies to ensure safe and secure operations". That is the FAA's talking point when it comes to assuring the public that they (FAA) know what they are doing. The "redundancy" in the system is the controller.
The next-generation of deep-space GPS satellites has just reached a milestone -- but an even better, unjammable system is already available here on earth.
Last week Lockheed Martin crossed a milestone, finishing "thermal vacuum" tests for GPS III, a new class of satellites that will replace the aging craft in orbit around Earth. GPS III will introduce anti-jamming tech to address a serious threat to troops, drones and ships that rely on GPS for navigation and targeting.
The first satellite could launch in 2014, but a better option may already exist: BAE's Navigation via Signals of Opportunity (NAVSOP) doesn’t depend on satellite signals, instead using a wide range of common signals readily available to sidestep jammers.
It can even use the GPS jammer signal itself. And it’s just as accurate, BAE says.
In BAE’s system, everyday signals like TV, Wi-Fi, radio or cell phone are used to triangulate the location of a person or vehicle. NAVSOP gets the position exact within several feet with this signal-scavenging approach.
It uses all sorts of other signals as well, from GPS satellite to air traffic control. The system can even learn and evolve by taking signals that were originally unidentified and using them to build increasingly reliable and more exact fixes on location.
Shifting to the cheap and nimble NAVSOP would not require infrastructure investments in transmitter towers and the like, because it takes advantage of whatever is already in place.
Larger models are in development, but NAVSOP chips are approximately the size of a coin and work with a tiny radio receiver.
From the Arctic to the Jungle
Harvesting signals from the air allows NAVSOP to work in places where GPS has traditionally failed, because receivers struggle to pick up the weak, long-range satellite signals.
GPS signals travel over approximately 12,000 miles, so by exploiting stronger signals transmitted from Earth, NAVSOP will work deep underground, underwater, in tunnels or inside buildings. For warfighters, NAVSOP can also work in remote locations such as the deep jungle or the Arctic.
Military applications for NAVSOP are wide. Take Iran’s recent claim that the country took control of a U.S. Sentinel drone. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) face the threat of disruption to their guidance systems; NAVSOP would greatly improve their security.
But this technology could do much more than just harden military weapons and vehicles against enemy jamming or hacking attempts. It could also protect trucks, ships and airplanes by ensuring they have reliable navigation.
On the home front, NAVSOP could lead to the equivalent of indoor GPS for firefighters trying to rescue people inside smoke-filled buildings or miners underground -- or even spelunkers who don't want to fall off the grid.
Risks of GPS Dependence
Overreliance on GPS signals is rampant in day-to -day life from data networks, financial systems, health networks, rail, road, aviation and marine transport, to shipping and agriculture. And military platforms commonly use GPS to find their position, navigate and execute missions.
With different systems sharing GPS dependency, a loss of signal could cause the simultaneous failure of many things people rely on daily.
Last year, the European Commission estimated that six to seven percent of its countries' GDP, representing a whopping $1 trillion, is already dependent on satellite radio navigation in Europe alone.
BAE and Lockheed aren’t the only ones working on a better more robust system. Other countries are developing their own systems, including the Russian GLONASS
, Galileo for the European Union
set to be completed in 2020 and COMPASS in China.
China began launching satellites last year, with its ultimate goal global navigation via 35 satellites by 2020.
Perhaps a better solution is already here on the ground?
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/30/better-than-gps-bae-navsop/?intcmp=features#ixzz2DvxLJpRB