Ukrainian Navy, military intelligence strike at Russian gas tower in Black Sea

Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Navy, reports.

"Yes, this is the Ukrainian Navy in partnership with the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine. Yes, the occupiers used this location for GPS spoofing to make civilian navigation dangerous. We cannot allow this to happen," he wrote on Facebook.

According to Pletenchuk, half a day before the attack, the Russians deployed equipment and military personnel onto the platform. At the time, there were no civilians there, and the platform was not performing its normal functions.

Ukrainian public and political activist Serhiy Sternenko said that the Russian occupation army placed technical reconnaissance equipment on the tower and kept up to 40 personnel there.

"Now they are underwater and at the same time fried Russians," Sternenko emphasized.

He added that the gas platform is still on fire.

"The Ukrainian Navy is armed with Sea Baby twin drones with a range of up to 1,000 km and a warhead of about 900 kg, so the Russians will have less and less chances to survive in the Black Sea," the public figure emphasized.

He also posted a video of the successful attack by Ukrainian forces.

Later, the CyberBoroshno OSINT community published the coordinates of the affected tower in the Black Sea - 45.258880,31.671170.

What is GPS spoofing?

Spoofing refers to a deliberately created situation where a person or program successfully disguises itself as another by falsifying data, thereby gaining an illegal advantage.

In practice, spoofing involves using specialized electronics to jam GPS (GLONASS) satellite signals and replace them with a false signal. As a result, the drone continues to navigate using the global navigation system automatically, but its control is taken over by a false signal from another operator.

The first encounter with spoofing elements in global practice occurred with the U.S. military in 2008. A prisoner was found with a laptop containing images captured by American drones. The following year, during another operation, trophies were seized—computers with several hours of video footage from American UAVs. The adversary used unprotected communication channels for video interception with the SkyGrabber software, which at that time cost $26 and was freely available.

Protection against spoofing attacks involves special measures: using encrypted closed communication signals, mandatory redundancy and backup of onboard subsystems, employing various navigation systems, and enhancing the "intelligence" level for autonomous operations.

• On the night of August 8-9, the Group 13 special forces destroyed a speedboat of the KC 701 project Tunets type using a MAGURA V5 marine drone.