Pranksters Can Now Send Messages to Your GPS Navigation

The next time you see “bull fight in progress”, “bomb alert”, “air crash”, or “terrorist incident” on your traffic-update enabled GPS navigation, don’t be too quick to assume that’s what actually happened. Some “hackers” have discovered a way to inject RDS messages (which use the FM frequency to send traffic and weather information) into your GPS, triggering off a different alert message depending on the message.

However, since most GPS devices don’t yet have traffic integration (the one that came with our car doesn’t), this won’t be a huge deal yet. But when these prankers find out how to inject messages that tell you there’s a gigantic traffic jam on one freeway in order to move everyone to another—and thus clearing up traffic on the first—people will start to worry. – Jason Chen

Satellite navigation users at risk for false messages [ComputerWorld]