alt.hn

1/28/2026 at 9:50:47 PM

Somebody used spoofed ADSB signals to raster the meme of JD Vance

 https://alecmuffett.com/article/143548

by wubin

1/28/2026 at 11:34:54 PM

This was not spoofed at the ADS-B layer. It was just spoofed to adsb exchange. (While typically a feeder contributes to multiple sites, this one didn't.) eg:

- https://globe.adsb.fi/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zo...

- https://adsb.lol/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-80.030&zoom=14...

Relevant discussion on r/adsb: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1qp3q9n/interesting/ where they note it's also absent on FR24, airplanes.live, and theairtraffic.com.

The adsb-x feeder map: https://map.adsbexchange.com/mlat-map/ They probably won't have a hard time identifying who contributed that data.

by paulirish

1/29/2026 at 1:52:57 AM

Yea, this is more like vandalizing Wikipedia than spoofing or interfering with safety-critical systems. It's juvenile, but probably not crashing any planes. It'll get reverted, and then presumably the adsb exchange website will tighten up their security.

by ryandrake

1/29/2026 at 1:18:06 PM

There is no security within ADS-B. All you need is directional antenna pointing at receiver (if you just want to fuck with website, not cause mass panic in the nearest airport tower), there is no encryption or other form of authentication in the messages.

by PunchyHamster

1/29/2026 at 3:14:03 PM

The security in question is the ADS-B exchange's web site's security, not the security of the ADS-B system. It's unlikely this vandal even has an antenna.

by ryandrake

1/29/2026 at 9:11:45 AM

> It's juvenile

Juvenile times call for juvenile measures. In case you haven’t noticed, the US is being run by a bunch of arrested development high school bullies. Juvenile is one of the only languages they understand.

by antonvs

1/29/2026 at 12:32:41 PM

If anything it juvenile it's "the other guy/team/party did it first".

by account42

1/29/2026 at 11:37:01 AM

And is Vance or Trump watching Flightradar24 in their free time? And if they did, would they even get mad at this and not find it funny? And if they did get mad at it, would they do anything at all? If they did something, would it be anything desirable or just trying to retaliate at whoever drew this?

by morpheuskafka

1/29/2026 at 12:40:28 PM

Trump is a narcist and it is known that he spends too much time on social media- and golf.

Vance however is the real deal. May god/science help us all if Trump ever has his long overdue stroke.

by expedition32

1/29/2026 at 10:17:21 AM

+N. If I could, I would give you multiple upvotes.

by zombot

1/29/2026 at 4:16:47 AM

I had also posted this story earlier, then deleted it once I learned that. However, I did find this interesting doc about real ADS-B spoofing, which does not appear to be very easy:

https://www.icao.int/sites/default/files/APAC/Meetings/2025/...

by consumer451

1/29/2026 at 1:20:39 PM

That just says "you need to go outside, and own an SDR". It's very easy, there is no encryption nor authentication in the system

by PunchyHamster

1/29/2026 at 3:57:01 PM

Man, I wrote that comment at the end of a 14hr work day. The crazy thing is that I had seen that SDR slide when I first looked at this. Hours later, when I posted the comment, I reviewed it again and completely hallucinated the SDR slide away.

I need to check all the work I did towards the end of yesterday. Valuable lesson. Thanks.

by consumer451

1/28/2026 at 11:50:49 PM

As other commenters noted, this is almost certainly not RF spoofing, just sending bad data to an aggregator (ADS-B Exchange) over the internet.

This instance of spoofing is notable for being the first that I know of that wasn't primitive vector art or text, but a raster image!

In that area of Florida multiple receivers would have picked up actual ADS-B broadcasts. ADS-B aggregators do have various anti-spoofing measures, but they're not impossible to circumvent.

The only case of actual RF spoofing of aircraft transponder signals that I know of was actually done by the U.S. Secret Service, which interfered with passenger jet collision alert systems (TCAS) by apparently broadcasting bogus signals near Ronald Reagan National Airport (KDCA): https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/aviation-flights-whi...

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 1:01:42 AM

Just because I don't often get a chance to talk about this, I'll mention that there was a malfunction/accident/bug that caused what you might call spoofed signals to go out around Long Island and New York. Really interesting case where it seems that an FAA system wasn't handling magnetic declination correctly, which led to it generating false TIS-B targets that were rotated 13 degrees from real aircraft positions, from the radar antenna point of view: https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1508505542423064578

(TIS-B is a system that broadcasts ADS-B-like signals for aircraft that are being tracked by radar but either don't have ADS-B Out or otherwise might not be picked up by other aircraft with ADS-B In, e.g. maybe they're at a low altitude.)

There have been a couple other incidents with the TIS-B system. E.g. this apparent test near Dallas in 2022 that generated dozens of false targets in an interesting pattern: https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1481712428932997122 There was a similar incident around LAX several months later.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 3:45:57 AM

whoa, i saw your initial tweet about this, but never saw your follow up that confirmed the magnetic declination association. the convergence back to the ground radar is brilliant. nice find.

by andyfowler

1/29/2026 at 2:49:11 AM

Wow, that would appear to have some potential for bad stuff to happen.

by jacquesm

1/29/2026 at 12:12:42 AM

Notably, the history of this aircraft shows MLAT as the source for all tracking. This spoof is the first ads-b “track” for this plane.

But there’s so much wrong with the data: 50k ft at 80knots (ground speed!) in a 747.

by Scoundreller

1/29/2026 at 12:32:50 AM

Dang, dude invented a 747 that's incapable of stalling.

by jychang

1/29/2026 at 2:49:50 AM

Groundspeed, not airspeed.

by jacquesm

1/29/2026 at 8:44:22 AM

hundred knots of wind on demand is also not a small invention :)

by RandomTeaParty

1/29/2026 at 12:55:07 AM

Must be a strong headwind!

by x3n0ph3n3

1/29/2026 at 12:08:42 AM

(Of course if you were spoofing ADS-B RF signals you wouldn't necessarily need to be anywhere near the spoofed locations. Just like with GPS spoofing.)

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 2:09:07 AM

Surely the receiver would run plausibility checks on the received messages and reject spoofed locations that are physically impossible to receive by said receiver?

by Nextgrid

1/29/2026 at 2:47:40 AM

> spoofed locations that are physically impossible to receive by said receiver?

Wait until you hear about Sporadic-E or Aurora. RF is a weird place full of natural phenomena making the impossible very possible.

by mschuster91

1/29/2026 at 7:26:34 AM

But even if that was the case, is there any value for a receiver to be receiving those? Surely those messages would be picked up by a receiver closer to the transmitter anyway. I think the value in spoofing rejection is greater than the probability of a transmission reflecting from beyond the horizon and not being already being picked up by a local receiver.

by Nextgrid

1/29/2026 at 4:30:08 PM

> But even if that was the case, is there any value for a receiver to be receiving those?

Yes, radio propagation is an entire academic field to be studied :)

In addition, if you have enough receivers you can use that to run something called MLAT [1] to also pick up GA aircraft that just have a transponder but no GPS. The more the merrier.

[1] https://adsbx.discourse.group/t/multilateration-mlat-how-it-...

by mschuster91

1/29/2026 at 2:59:25 PM

These receivers mostly don’t have gps and it’s very common for people to put in the wrong coordinates.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 5:03:13 AM

I agree with this. Hopefully they're able to track down who did this. To upload to ADS-B Exchange you need an account. But it's not that difficult to get one. I'm not sure what kind of information they may be able to get on it. As you say the person who uploaded this may not be anywhere near there. The aggregators probably should have heuristics like if only one feeder in an area with a decent density of feeder coverage uploads an anomalous track, it should get flagged.

by krferriter

1/29/2026 at 6:29:19 AM

> Hopefully they're able to track down who did this.

Why? Was anybody harmed?

Hopefully they don't find out who did this. There was never any danger, and without this kind of joke, the world would be less fun.

(Obviously it should be harder to fool critical systems, so this served also as a warning, but if you want to attack such a system, a real bad guy would do this in more subtle ways.)

by teiferer

1/28/2026 at 11:13:43 PM

The FCC and the FAA are two federal agencies that really don't want to mess with, so I hope for their sake they didn't actually spoof it. (.... I wish there were an FBB as well)

by foota

1/28/2026 at 11:45:33 PM

Seems like it wasn't actually spoofed radio signals, but spoofed data collection uploaded to adsbexchange. Still seems unlikely to make the FAA happy, but not as bad. I assume air traffic controllers aren't relying on adsbexchange?

by varenc

1/29/2026 at 12:09:32 AM

Maybe not "rely" on, but some definitely use public ADS-B aggregator sites.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 12:32:10 AM

I highly doubt any ATC on duty is looking at a public ADS-B aggregator as a real time source of information for his or her job.

by ryandrake

1/29/2026 at 12:37:55 AM

There are non-radar towers that don't have scopes. They may have a traffic display, or maybe not. They might choose to use a public ADS-B aggregator site because it gives them situational awareness, but they don't use it to provide radar services to aircraft. That's my understanding from listening to a lot podcast episodes with air traffic controllers, anyway. I think it's an unofficial, non-FAA approved kind of thing that can make their jobs easier.

See https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html... for non-radar ATC procedures.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 1:09:32 AM

> They might choose to use a public ADS-B aggregator site because it gives them situational awareness

I do not understand what the upside is, aside from saving a tiny amount of effort and cost -- they could get the same data with more reliability by just running their own ADS-B receiver, without having a dependency on a third-party.

by rootusrootus

1/29/2026 at 2:51:53 AM

> they could get the same data with more reliability by just running their own ADS-B receiver, without having a dependency on a third-party.

Setting up an ADS-B receiver is indeed very cheap. Less than 100$. That's what many people, both aviation enthusiasts and ham radio operators, do for fun.

The problem is, do that on an airport? You'll now need permits to install the antenna (needs to be covered in the lightning protection system and even if it's just a passive receiver probably someone needs to sign off on an antenna being added). Fire code means you'll need approval and specialized people to run the cable (you need to drill holes in fire walls). Maybe there's some law or regulation requiring approval or causing a paper trail (e.g. in Germany, all electrical appliances have to be isolation-tested and visually inspected every two years by an electrician). Doing that the proper way is an awful lot of work. And by that point, someone will notice "hey, a Raspberry Pi? An RTL-SDR stick from eBay? No way that is certified to be used in a safety critical environment", killing off the project or requiring a certified device costing orders of magnitude more money.

In contrast, a privately owned laptop, tablet or phone with the Flightaware app? No one will give a shit about it unless someone relies on FA too much, causes an incident and that is found out.

by mschuster91

1/30/2026 at 2:24:23 AM

All good points. I'd set it up very near the airport but not on it and then access it using the same web browser that I'd use to go to ADSB Exchange.

by rootusrootus

1/30/2026 at 11:15:25 AM

> I'd set it up very near the airport but not on it

The problem is, you need to have a good height for the antenna - "height is might" in radio, particularly above VHF bands. I actually can see this with my own ADS-B receiver - I'm in a valley and precisely can see that effect when plotting received packets.

by mschuster91

1/30/2026 at 7:38:29 PM

I get good distance from my ground level antenna, but while I'm in a valley, it's very wide and long. My assumption is that most airports are going to be in fairly flat areas.

by rootusrootus

1/30/2026 at 3:59:13 AM

Why? You would almost certainly get better data with higher reliability and no effort and no money spent from airplanes.live, adsbexchange.com, etc.

by jjwiseman

1/30/2026 at 7:39:40 PM

The original point was that you become reliant on a public service, probably run by volunteers, for something halfway critical to your operation. Doing it yourself is easy and then you control the reliability, not someone else.

by rootusrootus

2/2/2026 at 5:08:58 PM

You're just saying things that don't have basis in reality.

It's not something halfway critical to the operation–why would the FAA allow that? ADS-B Exchange is not run by volunteers–it's run by employees of JETNET LLC, an aviation intelligence company. Doing it yourself almost certainly gives you less information–you're not part of a global network of receivers. It almost certainly gives you less reliability–receivers in the big networks typically have a fair amount of overlap which gives redundancy your single receiver doesn't have.

It's also not FAA approved!

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 1:15:11 AM

I'd assume it's more to see "whats the latest ETA for this aircraft that's scheduled for 1 hour?". Their own ADS-B receiver is unlikely to pick it up.

by fy20

1/29/2026 at 7:43:39 AM

Upside may be just that the equivalent first-party system doesn't exist or performs worse? ATC tower isn't a SCIF, they probably get their real-time news from Twitter like everyone else, too.

by TeMPOraL

1/29/2026 at 12:32:06 PM

> they could get the same data

They could get uncensored data too - you dont want billionaires jets crashing into other planes because they didnt want to be tracked.

by blitzar

1/29/2026 at 6:41:38 PM

airplanes.live, adsb.lol, ADS-B Exchange, adsb.fi, etc. do not censor the data.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 1:21:54 AM

Imagine your boss doesn’t like you looking at ADS-B sites because it’s not data from an FAA approved system but as long as you’re discreet and not actually breaking a reg they don’t yell at you. Then they come in and see that you installed an antenna, RTL-SDR, and raspberry pi in the tower.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 12:33:31 AM

if there is any critical aviation service using a 3rd party website that relies on volunteer reporting of data, they deserve whatever happens

by b00ty4breakfast

1/29/2026 at 1:53:59 AM

[dead]

by immibis

1/28/2026 at 11:14:52 PM

plus they did that right next to an airport

by cm2187

1/28/2026 at 11:29:39 PM

Depends, how much did DOGE fuck with their leadership and management.

We now have to both identify obama judges, trump judges and trump bootlickers.

by cyanydeez

1/28/2026 at 10:25:22 PM

It's still there as of now:

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-...

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 11:26:12 PM

Source:Other

There it is. Someone running a fake feeder uploaded fake data. No spoofed signals were actually sent over the radio.

by nshireman

1/28/2026 at 11:40:29 PM

I always thought that coverage of those receivers was so dense by now that you'd have multiple reports of each aircraft but apparently that's not the case.

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 11:54:57 PM

There is overlapping coverage, yes, but the server fuses them into one entry.

by nshireman

1/28/2026 at 10:38:47 PM

[flagged]

by belter

1/28/2026 at 10:46:44 PM

No way... wtf?

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 11:12:42 PM

This is not even a surprise. Trump has been a fan of Putin for years.

by andrewflnr

1/29/2026 at 1:24:09 AM

The photo was praised by Kirill Dmitriev, one of Russia’s key negotiators

I think it's part of his strategy of getting on Putin's good side.

by userbinator

1/28/2026 at 11:15:38 PM

It may not be a surprise to you but it is a surprise to me because there are many other characters that he could be a fan of , he's literally giving Putin top billing here, right next to a picture of what seems to be him and his granddaughter.

What's next? Pol Pot? Stalin? Kim?

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 11:35:03 PM

I really recommend you read Bob Woodward's four most recent books, starting with Fear[¹] . They give us a fascinating look into Trump's mind, and we get frank discussions from Trump and the people around him about how he not only idolizes strong men like Putin and Kim, but wishes he could be more like them if it weren't for the limits on his power and weak people around him (i.e. more feared/respected by his subordinates, able to command them with an iron fist, etc.).

[¹] The title of the book comes from Trump remarking to Woodward that "Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear."

by nozzlegear

1/29/2026 at 2:18:00 AM

That word works two ways: it shows that Trump would like to be feared, but he's not, it also shows that he's probably very scared, especially of the people he's sucking up to.

by jacquesm

1/29/2026 at 9:45:19 AM

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

by gorgoiler

1/29/2026 at 1:25:33 AM

He only likes right wing dictators. Even if the left wing dictators behave exactly like right wing dictators.

by mr_toad

1/28/2026 at 11:26:06 PM

[flagged]

by blell

1/28/2026 at 11:38:57 PM

Because?

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 11:51:13 PM

Yeah... Putin has many more nukes.

by actionfromafar

1/28/2026 at 11:28:54 PM

He isn't even at Putin's right hand, that's reserved for Putin's more highly regarded henchmen.

by mullingitover

1/28/2026 at 11:43:02 PM

Unless I'm much mistaken, Vance's face is centered over Mar-a-Lago!

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fjqtAa2qgcWsJvFfA

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.680&lon=-...

by decimalenough

1/29/2026 at 1:46:47 AM

If you get the DF17 frames and extract the airborne position messages Type Codes 9–18.

Then CPR decode them into latitude/longitude....plus plot enough spoofed positions so the point cloud forms a QR code like raster on the map, then scan the rendered pattern...you get a URL to the unredacted Epstein files.

by belter

1/29/2026 at 2:52:27 AM

Hehe, you had me all the way to the punchline, that was funny.

by jacquesm

1/28/2026 at 10:59:51 PM

Most likely they spoofed the reporting API to "FlightAware" or other ADSB crowd-data-sourced sites and didn't spoof "ADSB Signals"

by fortran77

1/28/2026 at 11:14:31 PM

Actually spoofing ADSB radio signals could very well land you in prison with a $100,000 fine. The FCC is very eager to find and fine you for these kinds of stunts.

Spamming flightaware is much less severe, but still... it's not cute to mess with life-safety critical infrastructure.

by colechristensen

1/29/2026 at 5:12:50 AM

FlightAware isn't safety critical. If it was then being able to spoof it in this manner would be negligence on the part of the operator.

by fc417fc802

1/29/2026 at 2:27:59 AM

How long before domestic terrorism charges are laid ?

Everthing seems to be domestic terrorism in the US these days.

by KnuthIsGod

1/29/2026 at 6:08:43 AM

Domestic terrorism is now an official policy goal of the "US" government, so yes, there is a lot of it.

by mindslight

1/29/2026 at 2:36:39 PM

Easy to justify the murder of your political opponents by calling them domestic terrorists.

What's almost more frightening is how many people actually buy it.

by abustamam

1/29/2026 at 4:58:39 PM

I'm still chewing on the idea of how many supporters are bots or at least bot-adjacent (ie manufactured social proof), and what can even be done about that. When I go to my local [small, suburban] protest in a balanced red-blue area, lately it's been many honks and agreements, and only a handful of angry grimaces.

So I think the tide has long ago shifted, which makes sense what with the terror gangs executing Americans and all. The question is how we can organize into meaningful opposition when most activity happens online these days, and every non-echo-chamber forum still has extremist nutjobs who derail productive conversation.

I'd think that Congressional offices are seeing a similar dynamic too, inundated with robocalls from "constituents", the occasional untraceable threat of violence to their families if they step out of line, etc.

by mindslight

1/29/2026 at 7:38:28 PM

It's happening again. Spoofing is in progress, rendering another image. ADS-B Exchange has blocked access to the ICAOs/hexes in question--if you try to look at their history you get redirected to the base map.

https://x.com/TheIntelFrog/status/2016841289556168990

by jjwiseman

1/28/2026 at 10:20:14 PM

For those wondering, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jd-vance-edited-face-photosho...

by guerrilla

1/28/2026 at 11:29:48 PM

My favorite one is "Emo JD Vance" with the heavy eyeliner and the scene haircut: https://www.amazon.com/Vance-Meme-Emo-Republican-Conservativ...

Yassified Vance, which a Republican congressman actually created and posted as a legit fan edit is also very funny: https://x.com/KatAbughazaleh/status/1841491297145634831

by randycupertino

1/28/2026 at 11:45:23 PM

> "Emo JD Vance"

Oh I thought that was the angry little man, what's his name... Ben Shapiro! (Google knew what I meant.)

by guerrilla

1/28/2026 at 10:42:51 PM

I had a few chuckles reading that. Thanks.

by deevus

1/29/2026 at 1:26:28 AM

Can you explain what is funny about it? I genuinely don't understand.

by Fnoord

1/29/2026 at 2:58:02 PM

Are funny faces funny? Are edited images funny? Are edited funny faces funny? Perhaps it just isn't your sort of humor.

by Am4TIfIsER0ppos

1/30/2026 at 12:08:36 AM

Reality is just so @#$%^&* weird these days. Feels like a bad dream.

by tanseydavid

1/28/2026 at 10:11:14 PM

Can someone explain what this means? Where would this have been seen?

by idontwantthis

1/28/2026 at 10:16:58 PM

Most planes broadcast their position using ADS-B, and some websites collect these signals and visualize them so you can track flight paths. Somebody broadcast a fake flight path that draws a picture of JD Vance on these sites: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-...

by burkaman

1/28/2026 at 10:29:08 PM

To expand on that, those websites mostly operate on random volunteers self hosting a (starting price) fairly cheap receiver and antenna with an open source stack that feeds the ADS-B data to the website operator in exchange for nothing or free "premium" benefits.

The spoofer could have just sent them fake location information drawing an image using latitude, longitude and altitude for color (in the default view flight paths have different colors based on the altitude of the plane at that point in time).

They could have built an antenna and actually broadcast this data, but that would be a lot more effort and most likely some form of crime.

by zeeZ

1/28/2026 at 10:51:09 PM

As a pilot I really hope it's the former. Broadcasting spoofed traffic at minimum would be confusing and distracting to both pilots and ATC.

by dpe82

1/28/2026 at 10:19:52 PM

> Somebody broadcast a fake flight path

They didn't actually "broadcast" anything. This was created by uploading fake data to absexchange.

by JasonADrury

1/28/2026 at 10:19:37 PM

No, someone probably setup a fake feeder pretending to be an ADSB receiver.

by HNisCIS

1/28/2026 at 10:19:43 PM

ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) is a protocol for planes to publish their positions, so help with the whole "not crashing into each other" thing. The data is mostly for pilots and air traffic control, but it is publicly available, and there's a number of sites that track the data so that you can see what planes are overhead or whatever.

Someone spoofed Airforce One's transponder, had it declare itself as "VANCE 1", and then fly a pattern to display the meme. Or lied to one or more of the major sites, pretending to be listening in on the ADS-B signals. It's unclear. Regardless, it's a very funny hack.

by OkayPhysicist

1/28/2026 at 11:20:49 PM

It’s basically the modern radar system as in it supplies the data air traffic controllers see on their screens. Civilian ATC doesn’t really use actual radars any more.

That said, TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) does not operate on flight data reported by ADS-B.

by cluckindan

1/28/2026 at 10:27:04 PM

Pilots and nerds that watch airplane traffic

Viewable on FlightRadar24, etc

by esseph

1/29/2026 at 6:33:09 AM

Pilots would tend to not see this, neither would people using FlightRadar24

by walletdrainer

1/29/2026 at 3:28:13 PM

There are now multiple ones, and they are spreading through more than just ADSBExchange for this attempt.

It is on Airplanes.live ADSB,FI,and TheAirTraffic.com. Isn't on adsb.lol or FlightRadar24.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf8

by esseph

1/28/2026 at 10:15:55 PM

> Where would this have been seen?

on HN, mostly

by JasonADrury

1/28/2026 at 10:24:12 PM

edit: op also has this, disregard

hugged but someone caught it: https://archive.is/VrEtg

by eep_social

1/29/2026 at 3:21:44 AM

Since most of these ADS-B collection sites are patchworks of unofficial/best effort, that seems like a great attack vector for nation state-level spoofing to interrupt flight planning, capacity planning, other tertiary air transport operations, and make civilians nervous. It's analogous to "hobby" code running key infrastructure of the internet without serious processes and auditing, testing, and verification.

It would be far better and more reliable to have the FAA do it by providing authoritative single source of truth as (selectively) open data rather than depend upon the whims / greed / sloppiness of an over-privatized utility. ATCs need and/or have this data anyhow, so in the future, it should be provided.

How do less neoliberal European countries do it?

by burnt-resistor

1/29/2026 at 8:10:47 AM

These are hobbyist sites, not critical infrastructure. Commercial aviation doesn't use them.

> It's analogous to "hobby" code running key infrastructure of the internet

I have some bad news my dude lol

by habinero

1/29/2026 at 12:19:08 AM

Isn't this actually illegal?

by aa_is_op

1/29/2026 at 12:35:27 AM

It’s not “illegal broadcast which engages the FAA and FCC to hunt you down” illegal, but that doesn’t exclude other prosecutions.

by altairprime

1/29/2026 at 9:09:26 AM

Other persecutions for what? Sending crap data to an API is not a crime.

by filleduchaos

1/30/2026 at 12:31:34 AM

It's literally "computer fraud and abuse" in every sense of the word, so one assumes that an avenue of potential prosecution and possible conviction would be under the CFAA act. This does not, of course, guarantee that a conviction would be made and upheld at appeal, but this community is quite familiar with the dire harm that federal prosecution for misuse of computer services can impose on individuals, no matter how misguided that prosecution may be. Prosecution can be wielded as a form of persecution that does not require a conviction as outcome to be successful, and that is the a pressing risk now faced by whoever did this.

by altairprime

1/29/2026 at 3:24:19 AM

Hilarious

by dayyan

1/28/2026 at 10:44:45 PM

Please explain the tech.

by andrewstuart

1/28/2026 at 10:49:16 PM

ADS-B is packet data telemetry broadcast unencrypted and unauthenticated by aircraft on 1090MHz.

Anyone can receive it, and many do. FlightRadar and others have networks of people with receivers that forward all received packets to central servers.

The aircraft self-report location, heading, altitude, etc, so anyone can transmit packets making ghost planes.

I am somewhat surprised nobody has stashed an ADS-B spoofer near ATL or AMS that just broadcasts tracks of A380 tail numbers crossing the runways perpendicular at 500 ft AGL or something. They have primary radar, sure, but I imagine there would still be a temporary disruption until people figured out what was going on.

I think this is the first case I’ve seen of ADS-B spoofing in the wild.

EDIT: this was spoofed reports to the data aggregators via the internet, not broadcast on radio waves. I’ve still never seen or heard tell of RF ADS-B spoofing.

by sneak

1/29/2026 at 5:21:25 AM

> I’ve still never seen or heard tell of RF ADS-B spoofing.

Probably because the required expertise, effort, risk, and reward ratios don't work out. You can cause a minor disturbance that isn't particularly visible and in exchange get investigated by the FBI. Seems about as wise as attempting to graffiti the front gate of a military base.

by fc417fc802

1/28/2026 at 10:51:23 PM

Fake signals are not uncommon, but mostly accidental. They are dealt with very quickly when causing traffic control problems

by pixl97

1/29/2026 at 3:49:08 AM

Sure, but traffic control problems can still be caused (temporarily) by abuse of the frequency/protocol by those intending to cause disruption.

Can you tell me more about the fake signals? Who sends them? Why? How often?

by sneak

1/28/2026 at 11:07:45 PM

I'm guessing this doesn't cause traffic control problems due to the no-fly zone over that area?

by mywittyname

1/28/2026 at 11:13:00 PM

Probably is not causing traffic issues. With that said I'm sure a number of TLA's are looking into it already, so whoever did it has hopefully took a number of infosec steps not to get caught and questioned.

by pixl97

1/29/2026 at 12:15:57 PM

There was this proof of concept in 2012: https://youtu.be/CXv1j3GbgLk?t=2483

(IIUC they did not actually transmit data, just fed it directly into an ADS-B receiver, but transmitting would've been trivial at this point)

by infthi

1/28/2026 at 10:56:37 PM

No real 747 flew this. It was a prank using impossible flight data via ADS-B spoofing. Ground-based “software-defined radios” (SDRs) broadcast fake transponder signals to trick ADS-B Exchange. This works because both the ADS-B & AIS systems use unencrypted, unauthenticated data.

by CGMthrowaway

1/28/2026 at 11:25:37 PM

It was sent to ADSBexchange's API, not over RF. No laws were broken.

by joecool1029

1/28/2026 at 11:28:05 PM

Yep, as evidenced by the "Source:Other" tag on ADSBExchange. Signals actually sent over the air would show ADS-B, TIS-B, etc, as the data source.

by nshireman

1/29/2026 at 12:19:00 AM

It’s only “other” at the very last point. Go earlier in the track and it shows as “ADS-B”, but every historical real flight in this plane is MLAT (it doesn’t broadcast its precise position but it can be inferred from receivers)

by Scoundreller

1/29/2026 at 12:17:18 AM

That's not true. And if you click almost anywhere else on the spoofed track it will show as Source: ADS-B.

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 3:10:13 AM

This is just yet another cost and side-effect of a deeply unpopular, business-destroying, corrupt regime.

by burnt-resistor

1/28/2026 at 10:07:35 PM

This has gotta be some sort of federal crime

by sammy2255

1/28/2026 at 10:19:12 PM

I believe this was "spoofed" only in the sense that a particular provider/online platform accepted data via an API that was abused to draw this on that platform only. Searching around it seems it was not found if you looked on other platforms, so it might not even have been a crime. I believe they didn't emit any real "signals" just took advantage of an API that should probably be better secured.

by pear01

1/28/2026 at 10:29:52 PM

At worst it'd be a violation of the site ToS - it's a crowdsourced community data based system, and not any sort of an official, important system. The account doesn't seem to have been banned, so maybe the admins are just rolling with the joke.

by observationist

1/29/2026 at 5:31:06 AM

> an API that should probably be better secured.

I think the API is secured? The entire premise is that a volunteer creates an account and uploads ADS-B telemetry. Detecting falsified data is a separate matter.

by fc417fc802

1/29/2026 at 8:01:03 AM

Sounds like authentication is working great, but their authorization design may be flawed.

by darthwalsh

1/29/2026 at 9:10:41 AM

How is it flawed? That is the nature of crowdsourcing.

by filleduchaos

1/28/2026 at 10:17:26 PM

ADSB sites aren't any sort of official thing. You can send whatever data you want to them. Just because it's there doesn't mean it ever went over the air as an ADSB broadcast.

by HNisCIS

1/28/2026 at 11:06:00 PM

Agreed with other commenters that nothing was likely actually broadcast, but if it was it would definitely be highly illegal and you’d have feds knocking down your door pretty quickly. They don’t joke around with illegal transmissions like that.

by lovecg

1/28/2026 at 10:33:22 PM

It's almost certainly a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because it's an extremely broad law.

by advisedwang

1/28/2026 at 11:15:33 PM

Violating terms and conditions is not a CFAA violation, per the Supreme Court case Van Buren v US (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/03/supreme-court-cyber...) which narrowed to actual fraud and data theft.

"The Government’s interpretation of the statute would attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity,” Barrett wrote. “If the ‘exceeds authorized access’ clause criminalizes every violation of a computer-use policy, then millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens are criminals."

adsbexchange is a user-generated content platform where you can submit decoded radio signals to a common database. Sending fake data to adsbexchange is as much a CFAA violation as posting hoaxes to Wikipedia or a social media platform.

by eleventyseven

1/29/2026 at 12:16:15 AM

Precedent won't get in the way of a tribal retaliation. They've proven that they can't be consistent with fundamental laws they've sworn to uphold.

by kevin_thibedeau

1/28/2026 at 11:03:51 PM

TBF so is your reply and mine.

by sophacles

1/28/2026 at 10:17:52 PM

An interesting question.

Assuming the FAA has the authority to enforce ADSB requirements (an open question post-Chevron), I can’t find any regulation saying non-aircrafts cannot transmit ADSB. Only ones saying aircrafts in certain categories must.

There’s probably some non-interference requirement somewhere (FCC spectrum licensing perhaps), but I’m not seeing it immediately.

All this is in the hypothetical that RF was transmitted, which as others point out it probably wasn’t.

by TimorousBestie

1/29/2026 at 1:20:40 AM

It would be under the FCC regs, not the FAA regs.

Whatever transmitter you're using would not be type-accepted for operation on the 1080 MHz or 978 MHz band. (47 USC § 301)

Additionally, RF operation with the intent of willful interference is inherently illegal. (47 USC § 333)

by tjohns

1/29/2026 at 5:47:01 AM

What if you removed a genuine ADS-B unit from a plane and installed it in your vehicle?

Also does impersonation necessarily qualify as interference? Naively, I'd expect interference to refer to jamming.

by fc417fc802

1/29/2026 at 7:02:59 AM

A transponder in a car is not an "aircraft station" (§ 87.5), therefore it is not covered by aircraft "license-by-rule" (§ 87.18(b)), so transmitting would be operating without a valid authorization (§ 1.903(a)). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

by jjwiseman

1/29/2026 at 1:41:28 AM

Excellent, thanks.

by TimorousBestie

1/28/2026 at 10:24:36 PM

(Assuming this were actually RF)

This is easily-prosecutable willful interference or possibly aircraft sabotage: ADS-B operates in licensed bands and uses an already highly-contended modulation scheme and transmission protocol.

by 15155

1/28/2026 at 10:28:08 PM

No reason to believe RF when you can just upload whatever data you want

by esseph

1/28/2026 at 10:31:17 PM

They'll probably try and make a case of wire fraud and CFAA as the usual go tos if it wasn't in RF.

by fragmede

1/29/2026 at 8:05:47 AM

"Wire fraud" means financial fraud, not "sending data over wires".

by habinero

1/28/2026 at 10:13:31 PM

[flagged]

by Scoundreller

1/28/2026 at 10:59:42 PM

[flagged]

by mvdtnz

1/28/2026 at 11:01:57 PM

[flagged]

by estimator7292

1/28/2026 at 11:11:39 PM

The traffic that the top of HN generates is remarkably little. It'll be Reddit that is causing this.

by danpalmer

1/28/2026 at 11:23:51 PM

I find it absolutely crazy how I spent around 20 minutes trying to find the rough estimates and predictions with everything to essentially summarize into the same statement which you wrote.

Although I would consider that even reddit might not be enough to cause a death wall if the infrastructure behind it is organized.

There could be a software mis configuration option, I find it the most plausible option personally.

by Imustaskforhelp

1/28/2026 at 11:09:00 PM

Not just HN, this is pretty much all over the web.

by ipsum2

1/28/2026 at 11:07:18 PM

Not millions, but still, they have a point.

by mulhoon

1/28/2026 at 11:11:03 PM

You should’ve taken the opportunity to not have been so unnecessarily aggressive.

by AreShoesFeet000

1/28/2026 at 11:21:21 PM

I mean HN has around ~5 Million unique users

Most are from US or from a HN user: population, well technically switzerland iirc (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33450094) But I don't know, I feel like there are definitely times where people create two accounts on HN or more or lose access of previous or want better names (I am thinking of creating a new account on HN myself) so assume half to go through ~2.5 million users

Over the span of one decade+ year though, a lot of people completely leave the forum and so I would consider frequent users to be around ~ 1 million

Then the people who are actually active a lot of days or are weekly active or monthly active and tonight's the night (dexter reference) that they open it,I would assume ~500k users

I would consider these ~500k impressions to be an average estimate on a really really impactful HN post on front page & they all might come through say ~24 hours.

I am being more generous and assuming 500k HN impressions on 3-6 hours timeframe then technically the server just has to handle like ~46 users/sec or ~23 users/sec

But even on a really high estimate we assume ~500 users/sec

But I have seen some benchmarks of websites/frameworks/languages which are able to handle 5k-10k requests as a really low to decent estimate depending on the task

I do feel like its something that I can architect ~500 users/sec on some hetzner box most likely at max for ~30-40 usd/month or using their smallest plan with cloudflare tunnels for around I guess ~2.99 euros or 3 euros per month

I feel like its definitely possible to survive the "HN wall of death" but any of my websites haven't gone and hit this wall but if anyone of your projects or anyone can anecdotally tell me something it would be interesting & we can discuss it.

Also I have seen this one person who was able to survive this HN wall of death on a literal 780 mb alpine server using lighthttpd. Which if we are assuming racknerd or dedirock or something can get to around ~7$/yr or ~6.70-ish$/yr deal from black friday & you can get such deals on websites like lowendtalk for quite a low price.

Though these providers have comparatively low bandwidth if you actually want the cheapest somehow option and want to survive this HN wall of death. (these providfe around 1TB-2TB/month iirc)

Personally I feel like netcup (my preferred provider) / IONOS might be better options as they are still cheap while giving more lenient bandwidth or you can also find probably some really cheap high bandwidth black friday deals around the 7$/yr mark as well

I think I am getting off topic but I really like german hosting providers usually for the most part except the only thing I do hate a (little?) about them is that I have observed that they have a reputation of being exceptionally strict to the rules/some have the more ban first-ask-later approach which um might suck if your project is a little unconvential or quite frankly it can sometimes conflict with my morals as I always feel a little bit of hestitation around building around such system.

by Imustaskforhelp