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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

351–360 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#351
post #342
post #320

I've always wanted to bring a lil router like a GL.iNet, pay for internet, then share it free for everyone on the plane hehe

This is how we get aircraft wifi with Meraki Air Marshall-like DDoS [0] for hotspots. Don't ruin it for us! [0] https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting... . This basically detects any access points in a wireless network repeating a signal and automatically boots them. only works on 2.4GHz networks if I understand correctly.

... wouldn't that be a type of jamming and therefore illegal ?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#352
post #329
post #279

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Only if it’s unencrypted, of course. Rarely the case nowadays.

If it's important but you got time, you could always save the packets and crack them when quantum computing comes out for consumers. You have to wait a couple of decades probably, but maybe it's worth it

NSA is already taking care of that in Utah.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#353
post #95

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Airlines, coffee shops and similar entities providing Internet as an ancillary service were not subject to these rules when they were in effect. The rules primarily target ISPs selling directly to customers.

It also fails for mobile data and large crowds. Try checking your email at a concert.

I always enable my 5G when I get into big crowds and it usually fixes that problem, assuming service is available.

I usually keep it off otherwise though because average bandwidth tends to be better on LTE in my experience.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#354

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Maybe the plane is staying level but the ground is variable terrain.

Elevation is relative to sea level, not the ground.

Yes, the elevation is based on sea level. I don't fly much and recently landed in Denver and was watching the altitude on the screen in front of me. As we were descending we landed well before I was thinking we would, about a mile in elevation above sea level.. it was "duh" obvious when it happened, but I was tired and clearly not thinking about it!

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#355
post #214

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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…

Similar is probably possible on cruise ships, I noticed on Carnival you could still get notifications from discord (I assume because most android notifications go through cloud messaging and it's required for their own app to work without internet).

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#356

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Ha! I've used a high-end GPS to see my location and other fun facts in flight. I learned to keep it in my pocket as despite my attempts to explain it was only a receiver, I was told by the flight attendant to "PUT IT AWAY." Not being one to push back as to be removed for that flight, I did just that. Streets and Trips was fun on a laptop for long car drives as you could live reroute in the car much like any old app c…

FAs can be really strange about that kind of stuff, not just out of ignorance. My kid liked to suction cup his GoPro to the window to take a time lapse movie of the flight and one FA told him he had to take it off the window because he was, and I quote: "modifying the structure of the aircraft and that's not FAA-approved".

I would guess that the flight attendant is doing their job. They do not have the authority or expertise to risk the airplane based on their own analysis, or based on some random passenger's explanation. The clearly correct solution is to remove the device and then there is no risk to the plane. I expect they are strictly required to respond that way and have no leeway.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#357

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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?

Bringing your own trust store to system https libraries is not often supported. Especially when you get into kinds of embedded environments Netflix supports. You also might not have the capability to bring your own TLS library either. If it's a limited environment, you might only get reasonable performance if you use the system ciphers, and they may not be exposed as primitives, and x.509 parsing takes up a lot of code space in the likely event that you've got limitations there too.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#358
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?

It's a business hotel thing, oddly all the cheap chains will have free breakfast and wifi, but often something like the Hilton will be pay for both, likely because the clientele they're targeting is business employees who will just expense the whole thing.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#359

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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.

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 possible number. Even if a "display only the final price" rule applied to all a consumer's options, we probably just buy things more when they're labeled as "$99.99" instead of "$109.99."

For extra fun, consider how phone bills attempt to "pass through" their own tax obligations, which have little to do with your own incremental usage, in the form of 'recovery fees' tacked onto bills. I suspect we'll eventually see those creep into all kinds of transactions, especially among other monopolistic/oligopoly businesses where you have little if any choice.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#360

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

You probably can. I suspect airliner software is appallingly insecure.

Relies very strongly on simple airgapping. Can't do anything to it if there's no wires in the direction you want. Can't remotely hack if there's nothing antenna connected that can talk to flight control. It has the luxury of not needing to do the "limited RCE" that is a modern web request
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