Israel fakes GPS locations to deter attacks, but it also throws off planes and ships

Israel fakes GPS locations to deter attacks, but it also throws off planes and ships Enlarge this image toggle caption Hassan Ammar/AP Hassan Ammar/AP BEIRUT — For the past few months, the U.S.-operated Global Positioning System has been listing planes, people and even ships hundreds of miles from Lebanon in a surprising place — Beirut's international airport. It's the result of a practice called GPS "spoofing" — which sends false location signals to satellites that overwhelm the real signals. "I like to say that spoofing is the new jamming," says Todd Humphreys, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin who is an expert on GPS spoofing. "It's a dangerous situation for air traffic control, dangerous for pilots," Humphreys says.