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What’s new: The MSC Antonia grounded off the port of Jedda, Saudi Arabia in May 2025. A study by Georgia Tech of maritime vessels in the months before the MSC Antonia grounding revealed 31 areas of persistent GPS abnormalities around the globe, with 22 of these being areas of wide area spoofing.
Why it’s important: Ship groundings (including that of MSC Antonia), collisions, and fires have been attributed to GPS spoofing.
What else to know:
- RNTF discovered and publicized wider area maritime spoofing in the Black Sea in 2017.
- The UK government has been warning ships about GPS interference, and advocating for the International Maritime Organization to approve eLoran as a feed for commercial ships’ electronic navigation suites.
367,000-Ship Study Finds Global GPS Spoofing, Red Sea Activity Before Grounding
A study of 367,000 ships finds global GPS spoofing, including Red Sea activity detected months before the MSC Antonia grounding in May 2025.
Researchers analyzing global ship-tracking data have identified 31 persistent areas of abnormal GPS activity, with at least 22 showing strong evidence of large-area spoofing that can make vessels report false positions and physically impossible movements.
The study, published September 29 by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, examined Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from more than 367,000 vessels. The authors describe it as the first global measurement study of large-area maritime GPS spoofing based on real-world vessel traffic, and the paper is due to appear at the 2027 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
