Universal Spoofing of Real-World Aircraft Multilateration

As spoofing attacks on GNSS-based aircraft navigation systems become more common in commercial aviation, independent local-ization methods such as ground-based distributed multilateration are increasingly being adopted for enhanced safety. While previous work has suggested these systems may be susceptible to multi-device spoofing, no successful real-world multilateration spoofing attacks have been documented so far. In this study, we examined the feasibility and potential impact of wireless spoofing on two deployed commercial multilateration systems. Our findings reveal that these systems share vulnerabilities with GNSS-based solutions such as ADS-B, although considerably greater effort is required for a successful attack. Using a testbed with a reception range ex-ceeding 300 km, we evaluated the requirements and constraints for executing such attacks and compared the efficacy of ghost injection, flooding, and trajectory manipulation tactics. These insights can help inform measures to secure existing multilateration systems.