Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#371

Post by Scoundreller »

louison11 wrote: post #276
KMnO4 wrote: 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

This is what I did about 7-8 years ago on flights when I was still a reckless teenager. Would just wait for people to buy the plan, then spoof their Mac address. There was also a specific airline, although I can't remember which one, which let me in for free without MAC spoofing - by using a Google Cloud VPN I had previously set up. The paywall was essentially blocking all IP ranges except for Google servers for Goog…

Took an airline that required an app to pay to connect… but also opened up a window of a few minutes of open access to let you download said app from the iStore.

I always wondered if there was a way to further exploit that.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#372

Post by EvanAnderson »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #271
savrajsingh wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should probably know the answer, but what happens when two devices have the same MAC address?

"it depends, nothing good" Network devices forward (switch, more technically) packets to and end device based on an internal MAC table (send packets for DE:AD:BE:EF to interface ge-0/0/0.0) and most devices populate their MAC table simply by looking at input packets and sending the "next" packet for that MAC address out the "last" received interface. If two devices in a network have the same MAC address, they will ef…

> "it depends, nothing good"

Fun anecdote from the early 2000's re: duplicate MACs:

Embedded IP time clock kept intermittently barfing out frames with the source MAC addresses of other devices on the network. The switch would update its MAC table and direct packets to this device. The Customer's AS/400 would kill all remote terminal sessions when the clock ended up w/ the AS/400's MAC. (They were doing a layer 2-based connection to the AS/400-- APPN, I believe it was called... Ugh, it was temperamental and didn't like any layer 2 "hiccups".)

MAC addresses flapping between ports is one of those "breaking the laws of physics" kind of problems that teaches you to question your assumptions. Gear with a crazy brain can do anything it wants to and it doesn't care about your assumptions.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#373

Post by jedberg »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #332
jedberg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Every device has its own built in trust store, and especially on devices like TVs and DVD players, they couldn't be updated. Was creating your own certificate authority and pinning it in the app not an option?

In most environments you have to use the built in libraries for network connectivity, so you have to use their trust stores. Also space is very limited for the client, so you can't just put everything into it.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#374

Post by xattt »

thedanbob wrote: post #317
chankstein38 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this same reason you used to be able to send messages via platforms like whatsapp without internet as well! I don't remember the airline I just remember I hadn't paid for internet but I could message and do a few other things but I couldn't browse the internet.

That was probably deliberate. I flew United recently and they advertised free wifi for certain messaging apps, or you could pay to access more apps or the general internet.

There was a report in the early to mid-2000s where someone got iChat AV to work, partly because it was fairly obscure and likely the network engineers didn’t consider blocking it.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#375

Post by sprokolopolis »

commandlinefan wrote: post #205

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…

I used to do this on airplanes and in hotels. I had more success in hotels, because there was less chance the other person was using it at the time and less chance of getting kicked off.

There was another little hack that I used as a little kid. Remember when airlines would sell or rent special headphones to watch inflight movies? The port was just two holes beside each other and the plug was two tubes. Before a flight, I would stop by one of the fast food places in the terminal and grab a handful of straws (preferably ones with a bendy joint). When I was on the plane I would connect the straws by fitting them into each other to create a long straw. Put one end into the port on and the other into your ear and you got free movies with audio!

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#376

Post by angry_octet »

savrajsingh wrote: post #219
KMnO4 wrote: 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 should probably know the answer, but what happens when two devices have the same MAC address?

That greatly depends on whether the medium is broadcast (like a radio) or broadcast-like (a shared copper wire) and if it has CSMA/CD logic. Many of the replies are losing that detail and thinking of how it would effect a 1000base-T network, which maps MAC addresses to specific ports.

For a broadcast network, the answer could be 'nothing' in the sense that both receivers would get the same traffic. The IP stack would then throw away packets destined for the other computer unless they were UDP broadcast or multicast, and even then it would only notice if someone was running Wireshark.

Advanced wifi devices/meshes will use beam forming and mesh allocation and might degrade if there were MAC duplicates, but I think they will generally operate in a non-exclusive basis due to end point movement and fading, so both computers will get a good data rate.

In summary: it's fine.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#377

Post by hocuspocus »

jandrese wrote: post #103
hocuspocus wrote: post #16

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.

My bad, you're right https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn2340#322ad9f6

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#378

Post by commandlinefan »

logeist wrote: post #254
commandlinefan wrote: post #205

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…

What does your son do now, if you don't mind me asking? That's the kind of stuff I was poking around with then add a year or two.

Ha, he's a CS major at UT.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#379

Post by hocuspocus »

jamesbvaughan wrote: post #23
hocuspocus wrote: post #16

The speed unit looks more like knots than mph.

Good catch! I'm not very familiar with knots - what specifically makes the speeds here look like knots to you? edit: Updated the article. Thanks!

Sorry it seems I was completely wrong, it's MPH, your ground speed was on the slow end:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/wn2340#322ad9f6

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#380

Post by sokoloff »

xp84 wrote: post #359
lukas099 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sticker price is almost never what you pay, since tax is almost never included. Not sure how or when that norm diverged from the Euro one.

I suspect the "how" is that we just never got the regulation that would prevent it because the 'small-government and low taxes' are aligned perfectly with the large business interests which tend to fund all campaigns. The "low taxes" types want to maximize the sting of all forms of tax and this is a great way to do that. And the businesses appreciate the psychological benefits of being able to show the minimum possib…

> we probably just buy things more when they're labeled as "$99.99" instead of "$109.99."

That's basic price elasticity of demand and entirely unsurprising. When something costs 10% more, people buy less of it in general.

We also buy more things priced at $99.99 than at $100.00, which is more of the psychological trick than it is rational price elasticity.

Post reply on HN