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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

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Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#191

Post by pwillia7 »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #92
hackmiester wrote: post #87

Here is how to get the equivalent data on a Delta flight. $ curl https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 448 100 448 0 0 5600 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 5743 { "timestamp": "2023-07-11T14:54:41Z", "eta": "17:48", "flightDuration": 278, "flightNumber": "DAL786", "latitude": 39.723472595214844, "longitude": -97…

It would be nice if you could send a POST request to open the door if you want some fresh air.

DELTE

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#192

Post by toast0 »

jedberg wrote: post #172
dgellow wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WA chat is not HTTPS (or even TLS) If you don’t mind, could you expend on this? Are there specific reasons to not be using TLS?

We didn't use TLS at Netflix either, and instead used our own encryption protocol that ran on top of HTTP. We could do this because we controlled the clients too. The why was because of trust store issues. Every device has its own built in trust store, and especially on devices like TVs and DVD players, they couldn't be updated. After looking at all the devices we supported, there was no common certificate signer amo…

Yeah, at WA we didn't have too much of a problem with trust store issues; although we did do extensive testing when we switched CAs. We did have to deal with the end of SHA1 certs though, I think we were able to get all of our clients to use sha2, but some of the platform browsers couldn't; and then we had to fiddle with our TLS server to send sha2 certs to some clients and sha1 certs to others.

Of course, there's not really very useful client identification in the TLS Hello, so you have to kind of guess who needs what. If we had to use different CAs for different clients, it would have gotten a lot harder, because it's not like we could rely on clients filling out SNI either. So then you need to get more ips for each service. I do recall needing to do that a little, but we only needed a single 'legacy' group that was useful for everything that couldn't manage the modern certs.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#193

Post by fnord77 »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #92
hackmiester wrote: post #87

Here is how to get the equivalent data on a Delta flight. $ curl https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 448 100 448 0 0 5600 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 5743 { "timestamp": "2023-07-11T14:54:41Z", "eta": "17:48", "flightDuration": 278, "flightNumber": "DAL786", "latitude": 39.723472595214844, "longitude": -97…

It would be nice if you could send a POST request to open the door if you want some fresh air.

Please stand by, a DHS agent will be with you shortly

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#194

Post by 0x457 »

pklausler wrote: post #123
jonah wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have location permissions enabled in your camera app, the image's exif data will have the coordinates in it. (US Civilian GPS units are prohibited from working above 60,000 ft above sea level and 1,000 knots due to ITAR munitions export restrictions.)

Stupid question: how do civilian GPS units know that they're above 60,000' or faster than 1000 knots without, um, working?

Well, they work internally, just don't expose information to the outside.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#195

Post by spike021 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #53
atourgates wrote: post #4

I'm an Alaska (relatively) frequent flyer. That airline offers a free "messaging" plan, that lets you send and receive messages on apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Though, it somehow prevents images/attachments from coming through on those platforms. I've always wondered how this is implemented technically, and if it might be possible to setup some kind of protocol/wrapper to send data that looks…

Probably 10-15 years ago when wifi on airlines was still pretty brand new I remember a fun hack for free Internet that involved Google Translate. Because the wifi landing pages used Google Analytics, they allowed traffic through from many of the Google domains. You could then go to Google translate and translate the website from English to English and use it as sort of a proxy server to get free Internet.

I'll probably show my age, but around 15 years ago I was in high school and they blocked most websites as well. This "hack" using Google Translate was how some of us got around the blocklist for many things. It was nice because it didn't involve having to install anything special or try to change configurations that were probably monitored by library/school admin.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#199

Post by jpalomaki »

naikrovek wrote: post #187
hk1337 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone will probably figure out how to send a request to disable auto-pilot or turn off the fasten seat belt sign.

the airline industry is nowhere nearly as stupid as the software industry with things like this. the communication between plane and wifi/entertainment system, if there is any, is almost certainly one-way. likely, the wifi system providing this info is receiving data from the flight systems and repeating it or transforming it a bit and providing that. it would not surprise me at all if the flight attendants have to p…

"The computer network in the Dreamliner's passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals." [1]

(I guess there's some kind of firewall, but we know that those are not always perfect)

[1] https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dreamliner-security/

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#200

Post by jfim »

dramm wrote: post #136

“According to this data, the plane’s altitude was only fluctuating by about 20-30 feet. This is more stable than I expected!” Autopilots are very good and they are servoing to the pressure altitude. Many pressure altitude encoders used in modern aircraft (for example to drive altitudes that transponders report to SSR radar or via ADS-B) have 25 ft encoding resolution. That 25ft resolution is likely what is being seen…

A plane going up and down 20-30 feet seems like it would be very unpleasant. Considering that there's longitude and latitude, isn't it more likely that the altitude is coming from GPS, which is notoriously inaccurate with regards to elevation?
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