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What’s new: More info on the use of GPS jamming by criminals. This time targeting luxury cars in India.

Why it’s important: This demonstrates again the weak nature of GPS (and all GNSS) signals and how they can easily be denied. And there are much more serious and harmful uses of denial than car theft.

What else to know:

• According to the article, the criminals are using a fairly high end jammer costing about $1,100. Much less expensive ones are available. Our research shows that one costing this much will almost certainly be multiband to also defeat other RF-based security systems.
• This kind of thing has been happening for a long while. Some of the things we have reported on:
  • GPS spoofing aiding in the theft of $1M in celebrity tequila in 2024
  • Another story about car theft in Delhi in 2023
  • 85% of cargo theft in Mexico being supported by jammers and spoofers in 2020
  • A report from the UK Government in 2018 
  • A horrific story about a gang in Scotland in 2017

Dubai-based hacker, jammers to block GPS: Delhi Police bust international racket behind luxury car thefts

Police revealed that the jammers used to block GPS signals cost approximately Rs 1 lakh each, while the programming machines used to input the new codes are priced at nearly Rs 1.8 lakh each.