# AIS Data Vulnerability Indicated by a Spoofing Case-Study
## 3 Results
### An Overview of AIS Spoofing Incidents in the Last Years
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Location and Date** & **Spoofing Incidents Description** \\ \hline The Southern Ocean, 2008–2018 & To disguise her illegal fishing operations, m/v [PERSON]/Sea Breez \\  & 1/Ayda/STS-50 committed identity fraud by repeatedly falsifying her registry, \\  & producing multiple fake signals, and appearing in nearly 100 different \\  & locations simultaneously. \\ \hline Gulf of Oman/Malaysia, September 2013 & M/v [PERSON] was involved in ”spoofing” by falsely transmitting her AIS \\  & identity during suspicious activities and deceiving authorities at Karachi port \\  & under the name of m/v [PERSON]. \\ \hline Ten global locations connected to one of the superpower states, & 9883 suspected spoofing incidents. \\ \hline The Black Sea, June 2017 & Vessel tracking systems placed many vessels near Novorossiysk Commercial \\  & Sea Port in the nonsensrical location, on the Gelendzhik Airport. \\ \hline The East China Sea, 28 October 2018 & M/v [PERSON] was involved in ”spoofing” by falsely transmitting its AIS \\  & identity in a suspicious ship-to-ship transfer and deceiving authorities under the name of m/v [PERSON], which was anchored in the Gulf of Guinea, more than 7000 m away. \\ \hline Point Reyes in northern California, August 2018–June 2019 & Ships thousands of miles at sea mysteriously reported GPS positions in ring \\  & patterns off the coast of San Francisco. \\ \hline Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, 2018–2019 & Signal interference, loss of erratic AIS/GPS signals. \\ \hline Strait of Hormuz, July 2019 & A British oil tanker, the Stena Impero, was seized by Iranian forces after the \\  & ship was spoofed into changing course into Iranian waters. \\ \hline Ningbo (China)-Nampo (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), & The m/v Fu Xing 12 manipulated its identity by employing two AIS on board \\  & and using four different ship names to disguise its operations in delivering \\  & illegal coal and other resources. \\ \hline Port of Shanghai, 2018–2019 & Fake signals caused ships to appear to be moving in ring patterns at short \\  & intervals. \\ \hline Ponce De Leon Inlet, Florida, 2020 & Four visual AtoNs appeared on the map based on fake AIS messages. \\ \hline Elba Island, 3 December 2019 & Deliberate spoofing of the vast number of artificial AIS targets temporarily \\  & affected the navigation of ships. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 4: An overview of some GNSS spoofing events that affected maritime traffic between the years 2008 and 2020. At the same time, a mysterious new electronic device has emerged in China that spoofs AIS signals in ways experts have never seen before. There have been reports of multiple spoofing incidents detected in over 20 coastal areas and ports (including Shanghai, Fuzhou (Huilutou), Qingdao, Quanzhou (Shiyucun), Dalian, and Tianjin) that have been ongoing for months. Unlike with 'traditional' spoofing, the GNSS signals were congregated into large circles, later dubbed \"crop circles\", moving signals shifted to the same position, resulting in a confusing traffic situation for the pilots of ships [42]. [PERSON] [43] observed that the locations of the \"spoofing circles\" were oil terminals. Spoofing timing, the imposition of sanctions on the purchase of Iranian oil by the United States, and observations by others that Iranian oil is entering China suggest that some spoofing is used to disguise these transactions. Circulation phenomena have also been observed in Tehran, Iran [44]. In all these cases, the real location was relatively close to the fake and circling locations. In some other cases observed in 2019, the real locations of the ships were thousands of miles away, literally on the other side of the globe. The approximate true location of the ships was verified by examining the field of view of the satellite that received the position reports from AIS.