Airplane Clocks Malfunction Due to GPS Hacking

Recently, there has been a surge in cases of GPS spoofing—a digital attack capable of throwing commercial airplanes off course—which has now taken on a more alarming form. Cybersecurity researchers report that attackers are now able to interfere not only with navigation but also with systems related to timekeeping.

According to the aviation advisory group OPSGROUP, the number of GPS spoofing incidents affecting commercial airliners has increased by 400% in recent months. Most of these incidents occur near conflict zones, where illegal ground-based systems transmit false coordinates into the airspace to confuse drones and missiles.

While GPS is commonly seen as a source of location data, it’s important to remember that it is also a crucial source of accurate time. At the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas, Ken Munro, founder of the UK-based company Pen Test Partners, noted that timekeeping anomalies on airplanes have started to appear during spoofing attacks. In one recent case reported by Munro, the clocks on board a Western airliner suddenly “jumped” several years into the future, causing the loss of connection with encrypted communication channels. As a result, the aircraft was grounded for several weeks until engineers could manually restore its systems.

GPS has long replaced expensive ground-based devices that used to transmit radio signals to guide planes during landing. However, blocking or distorting a GPS signal is relatively easy—it only requires inexpensive equipment and minimal technical knowledge.

Although such attacks are unlikely to cause a plane crash, they can create confusion on board. This, in turn, can trigger a chain of events where minor issues escalate into serious incidents.