Doubts that Iran managed to bring down an advanced US drone over the country last month using an advanced GPS spoofing attack have been raised by experts, who say that attacks of this type would be extremely tough to pull off.
Iran announced on 4 December that it had captured an advanced American remotely piloted spy drone, thought to be an RQ-170 Sentinel, and proudly broadcast images of the captured kit on state TV. The images depicted a drone that was intact and showed little or no signs of damage.
The Islamic Republic initially claimed that its air forces shot the drone down after it encroached on the country’s airspace near the Afghan border. Iran later claimed it was taken down by a sophisticated cyber-attack. Days later an Iranian engineer said that this attack involved swamping the drone's GPS receivers with a rogue signal that tricked it into landing on autopilot in Iran instead of a US Air Force base.
The unnamed Iranian boffin told Christian Science Monitor that Iran developed the attack after reverse-engineering previously captured or shot down US drones, and by taking advantage inherent weaknesses in the GPS navigation system.The US said the drone was lost on a mission in Western Afghanistan before conceding it was carrying out a covert spy operation over Iran. The US has asked for the return of the drone via Swiss authorities.
