GPS is easy to spoof

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The Global Position System (GPS) is increasingly being used for crucial safety and security applications such as emergency response services, law enforcement, cargo security, nuclear materials transport, aircraft navigation, and critical time & synchronization standards for utilities, telecommunications, and computer networks. This heavy reliance on GPS may be a mistake. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has warned that the civilian GPS signals (the only ones available to most government users and all private users) are not secure. Few GPS users are paying attention.

In a recent paper [Journal of Security Administration 25, 19-28 (2003)], the VAT demonstrated how civilian GPS satellite signals can be easily spoofed, not just jammed. With spoofing, an adversary provides fake GPS signals. This convinces the GPS receiver that it is located in the wrong place and/or time. Remarkably, spoofing can be accomplished without having much knowledge about electronics, computers, or GPS itself.

The VAT has proposed simple, inexpensive countermeasures to spoofing. These could be retrofitted to most existing GPS receivers.
See Jon S. Warner, Roger G. Johnston, "GPS Spoofing Countermeasures",  Homeland Security Journal, December 12, 2003.