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A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

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Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#131

Post by noduerme »

upwardbound wrote: post #14
duxup wrote: post #7

The dongle idea is interesting but are we assuming someone is plugging in a dongle and making noises, on all these flights, sometimes for the duration of the flight and nobody finds these dongles?

Presumably they would unplug the dongle at the end of the flight while they retrieve their overhead luggage

What's it jacked into, though? There are some amazingly flat card skimmers out there these days, and even cameras to place on ATMs that are disguised as panels. It could be something with a 1/8" form factor that just looks like part of the interior of the bin. For that matter, it could be a whole modified bin installed by a disgruntled employee.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#132

Post by kayfox »

chx wrote: post #78
shon wrote: post #66

Pretty interesting. If it’s a hoax, it’s a pretty good one. If it’s a hack of any sort someone is taking their life in their hands because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. Cleaning crews and other staff have enough time on the plane to do something… I’m thinking like an Adafruit Waveshield with a timer or something. If it’s a ghost, it seems like a horny a…

> because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. not sure. A cursory reading of https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32 doesn't mesh with a silly prank. Which law do you think they are breaking?

Thats because you need to look at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504

49 U.S. Code § 46504 - Interference with flight crew members and attendants

An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or lessens the ability of the member or attendant to perform those duties, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both. However, if a dangerous weapon is used in assaulting or intimidating the member or attendant, the individual shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#133

Post by piperswe »

maxbond wrote: post #122

This reminded me of something that happened to me in college. This is a unlikely sounding story, but I swear it's the truth. I started noticing some odd sounds in the Student Union building. One day I had some time and decided to investigate. I realized it was coming from a fire alarm. I stood under the alarm and listened for a while. The alarm was quietly whistling "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk.

Was there an AM transmission station nearby? Sometimes some metal objects can act as an antenna-speaker combo when there's a high power AM transmitter nearby. (some people have even reported this happening with dental fillings!) I'm assuming this is a bell or some other low-tech thing, if not there are probably many other explanations

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#135

Post by girvo »

Nextgrid wrote: post #100
BbzzbB wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt courts would interpret "hacked into an airplane's communication system" as a silly prank, but I ANAL.

Plugging in a Bluetooth transmitter into a user-accessible port and using the system as intended is "hacking" now? Sure, passengers weren't intended to use that port, but from a system perspective the system is being used as intended with no interference or exploitation. I'm not sure this system can even be "hacked" short of disassembling parts of the plane and tapping into the communications wiring.

> Plugging in a Bluetooth transmitter into a user-accessible port and using the system as intended is "hacking" now?

Yes.

We're well passed that these days, for better or worse.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#137

Post by gaetgu »

jonny_eh wrote: post #126

Has no one noticed that this is only affecting a single airline? This implies an inside job by an employee, no?

Not necessarily. If I was to run a prank on airplanes, I would probably choose one airline. One one airline it can be dismissed as fake or an employee, etc. If it starts happening on multiple airlines, red flags start to go up all over the place and I would (theoretically, of course) start to be getting uncomfortably close to extremely hot water.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#138

Post by schoen »

kayfox wrote: post #132
chx wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. not sure. A cursory reading of https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32 doesn't mesh with a silly prank. Which law do you think they are breaking?

Thats because you need to look at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/46504 49 U.S. Code § 46504 - Interference with flight crew members and attendants An individual on an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States who, by assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant of the aircraft, interferes with the performance of the duties of the member or attendant or less…

I think the other statute is somewhat more relevant, because I'm not sure this is "assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member or flight attendant" (as it's more targeted against infrastructure than people!). I agree with the thought that a public address system is a "part" of an aircraft whose reduction in serviceability "is likely to endanger the safety".

You might argue that flight crew could be intimidated by the knowledge that their aircraft is behaving unusually, but I don't think that's particular core territory of "assaulting or intimidating".

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#139

Post by bentobean »

Unrelated, but brings back memories…

Back when I was in college some twenty years ago, we somehow managed to stumble upon a phone number we could call that would connect us directly to passengers in some unknown elevator car in some distant city. We had great fun with that for a while.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#140

Post by maxbond »

piperswe wrote: post #133
maxbond wrote: post #122

This reminded me of something that happened to me in college. This is a unlikely sounding story, but I swear it's the truth. I started noticing some odd sounds in the Student Union building. One day I had some time and decided to investigate. I realized it was coming from a fire alarm. I stood under the alarm and listened for a while. The alarm was quietly whistling "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk.

Was there an AM transmission station nearby? Sometimes some metal objects can act as an antenna-speaker combo when there's a high power AM transmitter nearby. (some people have even reported this happening with dental fillings!) I'm assuming this is a bell or some other low-tech thing, if not there are probably many other explanations

Not to my knowledge, but it's possible. There certainly wasn't a radio tower around, but there were antennae all over the place, as there are on any large campus. I don't think that's what was happening; it seemed to be different alarms at different times, but I believe it was always the same song. Which seems to me like they were being randomly selected by a script. These were fancy fire alarms and it was 2014, it's entirely plausible in my mind that they were networked and running a vulnerable embedded Linux. I don't think it'd be a Mission Impossible level effort to make this happen.

But, I'm going off of 8 year old memories, so the only thing I can say for certain is that it happened.

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