Following the U.S.-Israel attack against Iran on 28 February, more than 1,100 ships across the Middle East experienced GPS and Automatic Identification System (AIS) interference within a 24-hour period, exposing the vessels to navigation and accident risks, according to the maritime AI company Windward.
In what resembled a maritime cybersecurity incident, the interference caused GPS and AIS signals to show false vessel locations - showing them inland at a nuclear power plant, at airports, and on Iranian land, and “creating navigation and compliance risks.” In its analysis published March 1, Windward identified “at least 21 new AIS jamming clusters across the UAE, Qatari, Omani, and Iranian waters.”
Speaking to OCCRP, the firm said that this spike in jamming is not all “deliberate GPS spoofing by individual vessels but rather broad jamming that disrupts all traffic in affected areas.”
This is not the first reported jamming wave. Windward said similar patterns have appeared in the Baltic, Black Sea, and Red Sea, and now again near Iran.
Signal jamming at this scale is typically carried out using ground-based transmitters that overpower the legitimate GPS signals. In some cases, more sophisticated systems “can 'throw' vessels' AIS-reported positions onto land,” similar to the recent interference, the company said.
“What’s changed now is the intensity and geographic spread of the jamming in the Gulf in a very short period," Windward added.
Lloyd's published a similar analysis, showing wide-scale jamming across the region on March 2, with about 600 cargo ships appearing off the UAE, more than 80 recorded off Iran, around 50 off Oman, and about 10 off Qatar.
“I think it’s most likely that it is the neighboring countries trying to prevent Iranian strikes that today appear to have been targeting multiple neighbors,” said Royal Institute of Navigation chief executive Ramsey Faragher.
“This is widespread, intentional interference that creates serious safety risks, including higher collision risk and false alerts about where ships are and what they’re doing,” Windward warned.
