Originally Posted by venk

The entire search effort for the aircraft at the moment is based on the distance inferred from the "ping(s)" received by an Inmarsat satellite to give the likely "corridors".

Does anyone have pointers to or information about the protocol used for these pings to eliminate the possibility that the ping(s) could have been spoofed from a decoy location unrelated to where the plane really was at the time? Is it an open protocol? Have there been any reports of these "pings" having been authenticated?

Presumably, it is not as easy as MAC address spoofing if one has the right sat radio equipment.