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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

#501

Post by elif »

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…

Plot twist, he used your credit card and you are proud of his social engineering skills.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#502

Post by Arrath »

daveevad wrote: post #441
londons_explore wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually doesn't matter... The other person will get frustrated and disconnect and reconnect a few times, and finally give up and read a book...

> The other person will get frustrated and disconnect and reconnect a few times, and finally give up and read a book... That makes me really reconsider my past struggles with this form of Internet access.

Yeah...

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#503

Post by colordrops »

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…

Basically IP war-dialing.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#504

Post by eru »

MBCook wrote: post #487
lxgr wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, these are neat ideas, I hadn’t thought of that! One concern might be expiring access credentials (not sure if most OSes will re-prompt for a new password or just give up), but you could just make the EAP credentials per-user instead and redirect users to the captive portal again once needed. This leaves clients not supporting WPA-EAP, but these could just continue using the regular unencrypted/MAC-authenticated s…

You might be able to just do the sign up on the in-flight entertainment system and have the user scan the resulting WR code. Only works with IFE equipped planes, of course.

Well, the customer also needs to futz around with scanning a WR code, and get it from the device she scanned it on to the device she wants to use the wifi on (if they ain't the same.)

Though you could route around these problems, but giving them both a scannable code, and underneath some credentials as plain text they could type.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#505

Post by eru »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #438
cxcorp wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the captive portal just had a link (or on an IFE screen, a QR code) that connected your phone to a different, WPA2/WPA3 protected, hidden WiFi SSID that was generated exclusively for you? Phones nowadays support joining a passphrase protected WiFi AP via a QR code, so I'd imagine that's doable. The hard part would be finding routers that support >300 different hidden SSIDs, but honestly I would hope that that…

So you just take a photo of anyone's QR code? I'm not sure the hidden SSID achieves anything, that is presumably plaintext in the wi-fi transmission?

That QR code would only be displayed for a short time, and mostly only people sitting directly behind you could snap the picture.

It's not airtight, but better than the system it would be replacing.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#506

Post by eru »

Eumenes wrote: post #406
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…

9-10 seems young to have a phone, smart kid though

The older generation had Game Boys at that age, too.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#507

Post by eru »

_joel wrote: post #266
commandlinefan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way to tell for sure, but I can only assume that he had actually hijacked somebody else's connection and the other person's device stopped working for them. I sure wasn't going to stand up and ask the plane if anybody had had their internet plan hacked...

Buy a plan then clone the mac of that device, white hat it. Might have killed a bit of time (unless you needed sleep) :)

That's fun, but why not just buy a plan for one device, and then start a wifi hotspot on that device to share the connection?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#509

Post by hunter2_ »

ValentineC wrote: post #499
grishka wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if someone has multiple devices they want to connect? Most people would travel with at least two devices.

For Panasonic's in-flight wifi specifically, a login would only work for one device at a time. Great time to have an Android device with hotspot handy. :)

The fact that newer phones (Pixel at least) can use WiFi (client mode) as the WAN/uplink side of its hotspot stack (NAT, AP, etc.) is pretty neat. Not long ago, only the cell modem could serve in that capacity, as far as I'm aware. Frankly I'm surprised a single WLAN radio can pull that off. I pay the $8 on my phone and share it to my laptop and whatever devices my travel companion(s) might have.

Most laptops can't do this, right?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#510

Post by [deleted] »

hattmall wrote: post #493
inopinatus wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the article above, in-flight wifi has an API reporting position, altitude, and velocity. That is a feed from avionics, which renders the claim of airgapped systems essentially null.

The plane has a transponder that reports this information to the ground, ATC, other aircraft etc. The infotainment server has a receiver that gets this data. Or in some cases they instead pull it from a ground based service via the internet. The transponder is not able to receive signals, so it is air gapped.

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