In a further demonstration of the weakness of “security by obscurity”, researchers at Cornell University have broken secret codes used by Europe’s Galileo navigation satellite. Galileo is still under development and it is intended to be a commercial, non-US controlled alternative to GPS. As Galileo is intended to be a charged service, this discovery could threaten the charging mechanism and therefore the viability of the project.
Among the comments on the topic on Bruce Schneier’s Blog was this gem by Darryl Smith, “And you know what time it is anyway, just not exactly when that time is.” Very profound.