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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

291–300 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#291

The speed unit looks more like knots than mph.

I'm not so sure. The same data packet claims that the flight has 2h 25m of flight time left to cover 1167 miles. That works out to 483 mph, which is pretty close to the stated 487 and might be explained by some padding added to the time to account for taxiing. Unless that 1167 figure is in a different unit it doesn't even come close to working out at 487 knots ground speed.

... I mean, it could be in nautical miles, no?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#292

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…

So so surprised that nobody has found out the hack for free wifi on alaska flights. (At risk of losing awesome free wifi)

1. Open browser with iOS user agent and ios sized h/w. 2. Click on t-mobile free wifi link 3. Enter _any_ t mobile number you may know.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#293

When my son was younger - maybe 9 or 10 or so, we were on a plane and he was using his phone and I looked over his shoulder and realized he was on the internet... but I hadn't paid for an internet plan. I said, "son, how are you using the internet?" He said, "oh, a kid at school showed me - if you go here" (he opened up the wifi settings where the DHCP assigned IP address is) "and start changing the numbers, eventual…

lol, I used to do this all the time at non-free wifi hotspot locations, only I'd start off with a ping sweep of the entire subnet (nmap -sP) in order to get my ARP cache filled with a bunch of potential usable IP/mac addresses on the network. From there, I'd iterate through each one and set the IP & mac address until I found one that would let me through the firewall. Granted, being a NOC engineer at Wayport (now AT&…

I typically just praise with upvotes, but I’m feeling grateful today: anecdotes like this one and gp are why I love hn

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#294
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do the same thing at hotels. Still often works. nmap -sn 192.168.0.1-255 To find everyone on the network, then start spoofing each of their MACs until you find one that works

I’ve never been at a hotel that charged for WiFi - is that a US thing?

Conference hotels often soak the companies with booths for internet access. One place I did for my company demanded $1500 for 3 days of internet access for up to 5 devices.

In-room, you get free internet access, but in the windowless ballroom with spotty cell-service, there's nothing available for free.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#295

When my son was younger - maybe 9 or 10 or so, we were on a plane and he was using his phone and I looked over his shoulder and realized he was on the internet... but I hadn't paid for an internet plan. I said, "son, how are you using the internet?" He said, "oh, a kid at school showed me - if you go here" (he opened up the wifi settings where the DHCP assigned IP address is) "and start changing the numbers, eventual…

That's an amazing anecdote!

The state of "open Wi-Fi" security is actually really sad. I'm not aware of an easy way for the airline to actually do better than this!

I suppose they could use Opportunistic Wireless Encryption [1] and bind session authentication to that (i.e. authenticate a given OWE session, not a given MAC address) if the device supports it, as at least modern Apple devices do? But I have no idea how stable an OWE session is; it would be very inconvenient to have to login again every time my device switches between access points.

In any case, I'm sad that this isn't a solved problem yet, and paid Wi-Fi (as well as securing free Wi-Fi) still requires custom and clunky solutions like unreliable captive portals that need to pass through selective traffic (e.g. for 3DS, for payments, sometimes emails for password reset codes etc and more).

A standardized endpoint and API would also be nice, i.e. something to tell the client whether it's connected, restricted (i.e. able to only access a limited set of hosts such as the in-flight map as described in the article), or needs to pay/authenticate (and if so, at which URL). This could then yield an authentication token, to be provided for seamless reconnections for the same session.

There's "Hotspot 2.0" and WPA-EAP (i.e. WPA Enterprise), but these don't really have a good story for "pay via web portal" style usages and are more geared towards wireless carrier operated hotspot networks and corporate scenarios, respectively.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_Wireless_Encrypt...

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I tried to change the flight level by PATCHing altitude, but it seemed to require authentication. Oh well.

Maybe you can take risks like that, but I certainly can’t. I don’t think anyone with my name or skin color would be given the benefit of the doubt for even a moment.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Which is precisely the data those data loggers you plug in from insurance companies track to adjust/refine your rates .....

Honestly, it seems pretty fair to me. If I'm a careful, occasional driver, and the insurance company otherwise has no way of knowing that, then they have to bill me like I'm commuting every day in stop and go traffic, distracted by podcasts and who knows what else. There will probably always be a "premium" market for no-questions-asked insurance, but if the company can give me a break on my rate based on my driving b…

At it's face, yea, it sounds fair, and the more data you feed to the actuarial tables, the more accurately they can identify the specific cost of insuring that driver.

My concern is that it's a tragedy of the commons type situation: this normalizes data surveillance. We have no idea exactly what data the device is transmitting, and what the insurance company will do with that data. Regulations protecting this data are weak-to-non existent.

With everyone's budget being stressed, people are quick to trade a few dollars to sacrifice privacy, and then this technology is being mandated everywhere.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#298
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also have airplane/flight specific identifiers like “flightNumber”, “flightId”, “noseId(?)” and “airSpeed”. Maybe vehicleId is part of a base class or primary key somewhere and that abstraction is leaking.

Hey, a train has airspeed. :)

Heh, true. I deliberately left out altitude because this is HN but you caught me anyway.

Presumably a train's groundSpeed and airSpeed are the same. If they diverge you have bigger problems than a JSON schema.

Is there a variant of this for ships? surfaceSpeed vs seaFloorSpeed?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#299
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do the same thing at hotels. Still often works. nmap -sn 192.168.0.1-255 To find everyone on the network, then start spoofing each of their MACs until you find one that works

I’ve never been at a hotel that charged for WiFi - is that a US thing?

Yes. You often also have to pay for parking in many places. The price you see online is rarely what you pay for. But that's part of the culture, it's the same for restaurants, online purchases etc.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#300
We messed around on a recent KLM flight and what's interesting is that you get a DNS prefix of klm.com in DHCP (or some ms extension of it). The gateway has a name of www that allows you to access www.klm.com even though no name servers are accessible so DNS shouldn't work.
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