False vessel tracking

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Tankers Falsify AIS Tracking Positions to Hide Entry into Russian Black Sea Ports

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Amid efforts to enforce an oil price cap and prevent the looting of agricultural products, four tankers were detected disguising their routes in the Black Sea

In late February, as the world marked the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine—the impetus for U.S. and NATO allies to impose new price caps on Russian crude and refined oil products—four tankers broadcast elaborate false tracks in the western Black Sea, our analysis finds. Their real locations were hundreds of miles away.

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Systematic data analysis reveals false vessel tracks

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Analysis of tracking data from Automatic Identification System broadcasts reveals vessel locations have been simulated for a number of ships, including military vessels. This false information could compromise vessel safety, decrease confidence in a crucial collision avoidance system and potentially spark international conflict.

Recently, analyst Bjorn Bergman came across a new category of false AIS ship positions: positions for vessels that were not present on the water anywhere. Yet these tracks appear extremely plausible. This new type of simulated AIS tracks represents a significant threat to data integrity and highlights the need for vigilance when interpreting AIS data.

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AIS Ship Tracking Data Shows False Vessel Tracks Circling Above Point Reyes, Near San Francisco

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Analysis from SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch shows ship tracks jumping thousands of miles from their true locations.

In December of 2019 SkyTruth reported on a number of locations on the Chinese coast (mostly oil terminals) where ship tracking positions from the automatic identification system (AIS) became scrambled as soon as ships approached within a few miles of a point on shore. Following the findings last year on the Chinese coast, analyst Bjorn Bergman began looking globally for any similar patterns in AIS tracking data around the world. While he hasn’t found the precise pattern observed at the Chinese oil terminals outside of China, he has found a somewhat different false AIS broadcast pattern which appears concentrated above Point Reyes northwest of San Francisco, California. Could this reflect an intentional disruption of the underlying global positioning system that AIS relies on, or is there some other explanation for this pattern?

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Systematic GPS Manipulation Occuring at Chinese Oil Terminals and Government Installations

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Analysis reveals precise location and timing of GPS interference but purpose remains unclear.

Last month, an article in MIT Technology Review described strange GPS anomalies in Shanghai. I began investigating, and have now found evidence of a novel form of GPS manipulation occurring at at least 20 sites on the Chinese coast during the past year.

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People & Places

When Vessels Report False Locations

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Occasionally, the AIS messages transmitted from a ship provide a location that makes no sense, say, in the middle of the Antarctic or over a mountain range. In such cases, either the AIS transponder has malfunctioned, the data got scrambled in transmission, or the system has been tampered with in a deliberate attempt to disguise […]

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