MCAD Maritime Cyber Attack Database
Year2018 |
MonthMay |
Reference number20180501 |
Impact areaVessel |
Incident locationCrimea |
Incident countryUkraine, Russia |
Victim countryUkarine, Russia |
Victim identityPresident Putin visit at Kerch Strait Bridge (2) |
Victim TypeVessel |
MethodGPS Jamming |
Attacker countryRussia |
In May 2018, Putin led a caravan of construction vehicles across the bridge from Russia to Crimea to celebrate the occasion. At the time of the incident, AIS records for vessels in the Kerch Strait show that vessel transit through the straight was severely restricted. During this period, at least 24 vessels anchored in waters near the bridge sent faked GNSS positional data to the Anapa Airport, which is over 65 kilometres distant. Vehicles thought to belong to the FSO drove alongside Putin's construction truck convoy as it crossed the Kerch Bridge on the same day. A line-of-sight analysis of a GNSS spoofing device's possible range suggests that a spoofing transmitter based on one of the FSO vehicles at the Kerch bridge would likely be capable of targeting all vessels that reported spoofed position information. AIS statistics show that this was the only sustained spoofing disruption in Kerch in 2018. GNSS spoofing events detected in Russia are likely designed to deceive GNSS receivers on commercial drones to activate firmware-level geofence locks that prevent these drones from flying in restricted airspace such as an airport.
