The war in Iran has dominated headlines with reports of airstrikes and escalating military activity. But beyond the immediate destruction, the conflict has also illuminated a quieter and faster one increasing danger: the vulnerability of ships, and the people who operate them, to interference with their navigation systems.
Modern shipping relies heavily on GPS satellite navigation. When these signals are disrupted or manipulated, ships can suddenly appear to their navigators and to other ships that somewhere they are not. In some cases, vessels have been shown skipping maps, drifting miles inland, or appearing to circle in impossible patterns. The risk is even higher in war zones, where ships can be misdirected into danger.
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To understand the threat posed by GPS interference, it helps to first understand how GPS works. GPS systems determine location using signals from satellites orbiting the earth. A receiver calculates its position by measuring how long it takes for these signals to arrive. Because these signals are extremely weak when they reach Earth, they are relatively easy to disrupt.
GPS jamming and spoofing
In GPS jamming, an attacker blocks the real satellite signals by overwhelming them with electromagnetic noise so that the receivers cannot detect them. When this happens, the navigation systems lose their position. On a phone, the map may appear to freeze or jump erratically.
GPS spoofing is more sophisticated. Instead of jamming signals, an attacker sends fake satellite signals designed to mimic the real ones. The receiver accepts these signals and provides a false location. Imagine driving north when your navigation system suddenly insists you travel south. The receiver is not malfunctioning; it has simply been tricked.
For sailors at sea, counterfeiting can have serious consequences. In the open ocean, there are few landmarks to verify a ship’s position if the GPS is behaving strangely. Close to the coast, the margin for error disappears: water depths change rapidly and dangers are everywhere, especially in narrow routes that Strait of Hormuz near Iranwhere reports indicate that GPS spoofing has occurred since the outbreak of the war. Because ships are large and slow to manoeuvre, even small navigational errors can lead to grounding or collisions.
Red Sea grounding
An example came in May 2025. While the container ship MSC Antonia was in transit across the Red Sea, it started showing positions far from its true location. To navigators on board, this looked as if they had jumped hundreds of miles south on the map and started moving in a new direction. This caused the crew to become disoriented, and the ship eventually ran aground. The grounding caused millions of dollars in damage and required a salvage operation that lasted over five weeks.
Incidents like the MSC Antonia are not isolated. Vessel tracking data has revealed clusters of ships suddenly appearing in impossible places, sometimes far inland or moving in perfect circles. These anomalies are increasingly linked to GPS spoofing in regions experiencing geopolitical conflict.
But GPS interference is only one type of cyber threat that ships face. Industry reports have documented ransomware attack on shipping companies, compromises in the supply chain and growing concerns about the safety of onboard control systems, including engines, propulsion and navigational equipment. As ships become more connected through satellite internet systems and remote monitoring tools, the number of potential entry points for cyber attack is growing.
Military vessels often manage these risks through stricter network segregation and regular training exercises such as “mission control” exercises, which simulate operations with compromised communications or navigation systems. Some cybersecurity experts argue that similar practices could help commercial shipping improve its resilience, although smaller crews and limited resources make it more difficult to adopt military procedures.
Seafarers’ experiences
Much of the public discussion around maritime cyber security focuses on technical vulnerabilities in ship systems. But an equally important piece of the puzzle is the people who have to interpret and react to these technologies when something goes wrong.
In recent research, my colleagues and I have interviewed professional seafarers about their experiences with cyber incidents and their preparedness to respond to them. The interviews included navigation officers, engineers and other crew members responsible for ship systems. What emerged was a consistent picture: Cyber ​​threats are increasingly occurring at sea, but crews are not well prepared to handle them.
If you don’t have charts and you get faked, you’re a little fragile.
A sailor
Many sailors told us that their cyber security training focused almost exclusively on phishing and USB drives. That kind of training might make sense in an office, but it does little to prepare crew for cyber incidents on a ship, where navigation and control systems may be the primary targets. As a result, many mariners lack clear guidance on how cyber attacks can affect the equipment they rely on every day.
This becomes a problem when ship systems start behaving strangely. Mariners described GPS showing incorrect positions or temporarily losing signal. It can be difficult to tell whether these events are equipment failures or signs of cyber interference.
Even when seafarers suspect something may be amiss, many ships lack clear procedures for responding to cyber incidents. Participants often described situations where they had to improvise if navigation or other digital systems behaved unexpectedly. Unlike equipment failures, which have established checklists and procedures, cyber incidents often fall into a gray area where responsibilities and response plans are unclear.
Another challenge is the gradual disappearance of traditional navigation practices. For centuries, mariners relied on paper charts and celestial navigation to determine their position. Today, most commercial vessels are almost entirely dependent on electronic systems.
Many mariners noted that paper charts are not available on board and celestial navigation is rarely practiced. If GPS or electronic navigation systems fail, crews have limited ways to independently confirm their position. One sailor simply described the risk to us: “If you don’t have a chart and you get faked, you’re a bit screwed.”
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Increasing connectivity, increasing risk
At the same time, ships are becoming more interconnected. Modern vessels are increasingly dependent on satellite internet systems which Starlink and remote monitoring tools to manage operations and communicate with land.
Although these technologies improve efficiency, they are also expand the vulnerability of ship systems. Connectivity that allows crews to send email or access the internet can also provide avenues for cyber threats to reach onboard systems.
As GPS spoofing becomes more common in regions experiencing geopolitical conflict, the challenges seafarers described in our research become harder to ignore. The ocean may seem vast and empty, but the digital signals that guide modern ships travel through crowded and contested spaces.
When these signals are manipulated, the consequences do not remain limited to military systems. They reach the commercial vessels that carry most of the world’s goods and the crews responsible for navigating them safely.
This edited article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read original article.
