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A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

ramsayleung.github.io

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Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#111

Post by notahacker »

jeroenhd wrote: post #86
bawolff wrote: post #23

I feel like you have to be brave messing with a plane's network. People tend to get really touchy when airplanes are involved.

I refuse to believe that anything important for flying the plane is actually hooked up to the system providing Netflix to passengers. People do get nervous, and in theory you could probably break some kind of informational system utility if you kernel panic the box that booms up to the satellite receiver, but unless you're trying to get root on the plane's routers I don't believe there's a need to feel brave. The bra…

yeah, you're not interfering with anything flying the plane through the IFE system, and it won't be the same bandwidth they use for comms either (there might be some semi-sensitive passenger information stored on the in-flight server, but entirely different techniques would be needed to bypass whatever security that's wrapped in).

But "hacking" on an aircraft isn't going to be looked on particularly sympathetically by courts

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#114

Post by chrisbrandow »

jeroenhd wrote: post #86
bawolff wrote: post #23

I feel like you have to be brave messing with a plane's network. People tend to get really touchy when airplanes are involved.

I refuse to believe that anything important for flying the plane is actually hooked up to the system providing Netflix to passengers. People do get nervous, and in theory you could probably break some kind of informational system utility if you kernel panic the box that booms up to the satellite receiver, but unless you're trying to get root on the plane's routers I don't believe there's a need to feel brave. The bra…

I wouldn’t expect that either given the little that I know about the rigorous software requirements for aviation.

But I assume that neither of us has anywhere near enough expertise to “refuse” to believe that any computer/software system could be used in dangerously absurd ways even accidentally.

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#115

Post by mcpherrinm »

pumanoir wrote: post #113

Where can i learn to do this kind of things? Any book(s) that'd teach this kind of stuff?

I don't know specifically what skills you're interested in, but this is all pretty much networking fundamentals.

I think I learned most of what I'd need to do this in 'TCP/IP Illustrated: Volume 1'.

There's plenty of "network penetration testing" type books which might also be of interest, though I don't have a specific recommendation here.

There's a wider set of books at https://github.com/jacobian/infosec-engineering that's pretty good too, though it's a wider set of things than this.

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#116

Post by Doohickey-d »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #31

My question is: would proxying over SSH running on port 53 have worked? Seems simpler than using Xray.

On some networks, yes: I used to use a prepay mobile network (= buy a fixed quantity of GBs in advance, use them, once you run out, you get a restricted captive portal where you can buy more, just like on this flight). But all traffic on port 53 was allowed, it didn't need to be actual DNS traffic.

There's even some commercial VPN providers which offer openVPN on port 53.

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#118

Post by anigbrowl »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #13
traceroute66 wrote: post #6

> We affirm our strict adherence to all relevant regulations and service terms throughout this project. Except if you bypassed payment and used the service in a manner that was not intended, most likely you were by definition not undertaking "strict adherance" to service terms ?

Yeah I am a bit confused about posts like this. It’s bragging about breaking the law. There was a particularly bad one a few months ago where a kid had hacked Monster’s employee training site, and was sharing all this internal media in the post. I don’t understand how they don’t end up getting in some seriously annoying trouble with law enforcement. Well I looked it up just now and the post was deleted, I guess maybe…

I wouldn't go as far as 'breaking the law', and I agree with the author that the contractual terms ($31 for wifi) are a shitty offer to a captive audience. But I'm also tired of pseudolegalism being employed as figleaf for bragging about the ability to bypass access controls and presumably making everything run a bit slower for all the other passengers (the author mentions that they gave up using it after a while because the bandwidth was so limited).

Yes, long flights are miserable and air travel is a bit of a ripoff. I choose to cope by treating it as an internet break and enjoying a dense book.

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#119

Post by anigbrowl »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #20
traceroute66 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could also just be lack of knowledge. Huh ? DNS tunneling is not exaclty something you do "by accident". And if the person doing it on the flight "did not know" (which, given the text of the blog, I doubt) , then you can bet your botom dollar that the "roommate" that was summoned for remote assistance knew very well what was going on.

Didn't claim so either, but a lack of knowledge about that it is in fact illegal, hence the parallel to at least my previous experience where I've most surely have committed crimes in the past, because I didn't know it was illegal in the first place. I don't know the age of the author, but it almost doesn't matter, sometimes people don't know (lack of knowledge).

Come on now. $31 for inflight wifi is a ripoff, but even a 6 year old understands that if there's a price tag it's not an invitation to help yourself.

Re: A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

#120

Post by RandomBacon »

octo888 wrote: post #72
andy99 wrote: post #7

> The only downside was that although we broke through the network restrictions and could access any website, the plane’s bandwidth was extremely limited, making web browsing quite painful. Unfortunately this is also the downside of paying. Many times I have paid for internet, only to find it unusably bad. To be fair, I just flew a transcontinental flight on Air Canada the other day and the wifi was fine.

Do consumer rights exist in the skies? Genuine question!

Cruise ships wait until they get to international waters before allowing gambling.

Maybe planes can offer gambling while over the ocean?

For the exec who pitches this at a board meeting: you're welcome (cries)

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