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Airports As Secure As 802.11b
INO_Fiend writes: "SF Gate is running a story about how at both Denver and San Jose Int'l American Airlines has been using unencrypted wireless to connect the curb check-in with the rest of their networks. They tested this by grabbing a laptop and hanging around the airport. I guess I might finally have something to do with a laptop and a WiFi card the next time I fly..."
Changi International airport in Singapore has free access to the Internet over 802.11b in large parts of the airport. They also have modules with a bunch of power sockets and RJ45 jacks in the center of numerous desks in case you're low on power or limited to wired Ethernet.
Changi International rules in general, actually.
Why don't they just give the homes by the airport to deaf people?
It's no joke. My brother is profoundly deaf and he says the deaf community is totally clued into both cheap, airport-proximate housing and high-wage airport groundcrew jobs.
In fact, my brother works at the airport on the ground crew. When he first started his boss gave him a hard time about not wearing ear protection. My brother ended up showing him an audiologist report that indicated he needed SPL levels above 130 db just to get any registerable stimulus.
Reminds me of this Gallagher joke: Why don't they just give the homes by the airport to deaf people?
What has always annoyed me are these people that build next to an airport that has been there for many years (some dating back to before World War II), then have the gall to complain a couple of years later about the jet noise they hear every day because of the airport that was there when they built their dream homes. If they didn't want the jet noise in the first place, they should have built somewhere else.
Common Air Force bumper sticker: Jet Noise: The Sound of Freedom
Messing with aircraft [anything] is a big no-no
I keep on thinking that you really shouldn't be able to mess with airplanes that easily. I mean, if a gameboy can bring down a 747, why don't they make the things a little more secure. Well, thats why they tell us to turn our electronic equipment off during a flight, isn't it? Although how you turn off your digital watch is beyond me.
Anyway, I don't think that you would get access to the plane itself, just the airport computer systems. Which should be locked down fairly well I would presume, as most employees would have to have limited access only to the bits of the system that they were entitled to use, even if you could get onto the network itself.
In fact, in a site as big as an airport, you would have to assume that the network was compromised from the start - after all, anyone could find a spare network port even before wireless. You couldn't provide security on the basis of physical network access limitations.
Just because we have 802.11b doesn't really change alot in terms of security.
My 2c worth.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
What has always annoyed me are these people that build next to an airport that has been there for many years (some dating back to before World War II), then have the gall to complain a couple of years later about the jet noise they hear every day because of the airport that was there when they built their dream homes.
It was one thing to hear a couple dozen turbo prop flights a day in 1955. It's quite another to hear a jet engine every 3 minutes for an hour every other hour every day.
And what qualifies as "close"? Most of the people that I know that bitch about airport noise live *miles* away from the airport, but because the fsck'n jets need 10-15 miles of low-altitude approach for landing and at least 10 miles of big-throttle thrust to get up far enough where they can't rattle the china cabinet, they're "too close".
All airports should have a 15 mi buffer zone of industrial/shopping/non-residential BS around them.
Just because it is insecure at the wireless level, doesn't mean its insecure at the check-in level.
After all, if they have a firewall, and the wireless is on the public side of the firewall, then it should be pretty secure- the check in desks would have to use tunnelling to connect, but that can be arbitrarily well encrypted.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"In my experience, the folks responsible for implementing wireless have no clue of the risks. When confronted, they go back to their wireless vendor and pose the question, the vendor responds with a load of BS they can't comprehend and because they have no idea what has been said, it must be secure.
Groups charged with security often don't get their hands dirty with this - they are too busy changing passwords. Mention 'airsnort' and it usually is followed with a blank stare.
Auditors can check physical network security which now includes wireless. For the airlines under 'wartime', this should be mandatory - but it probably won't be...
Denial isn't just a big river in Egypt
...a cracker with the know-how could theoretically check their own luggage.
That's nice.
Mobile phones are also banned because they had big problems in taking out a network if used in the air - especially the old analouge ones. They broadcast at full power all the time. With line of sight to most towers in a metropolitan area, they would take out a channel in every base station.
If everyone rang as the plane was over the metro area ("hi honey, im coming in to land now, see you for dinner") then you can take out an entire cities mobile phone capability.
actually the primary reason is due to concerns about EMR interfering with the aircraft systems.
I still worry about this one. Really, they ought to shield their electronics better. It shouldn't be that easy to wreck the navigation stuff on a plane. Otherwise what is to stop a terrorist on a hilltop from aiming a parabolic dish at the tarmac? This is a critical concern now. Why board a plane to down it if you could do it with almost total safety from a distance?
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Yeah, and what really gets me is the difficulty in implementing basic levels of security in the wireless devices, even when it's "supported" in their firmware!
EG. I have a Dell-branded residential gateway over here. It's really a Lucent RG-1000 though.
Despite reading for quite a while now that "Lucent supports the ability to restrict wireless access based on MAC address of the wireless NIC attempting to connect to it." - I couldn't ever find this option in any of my setup software.
Knowing that Dell might not have the best setup software around, I went to Lucent's site and downloaded their latest firmware and setup program. Got the firmware updated ok, but nope - still no MAC address options anywhere. Waited a few months, and saw yet another new firmware update. Tried again, but nope - still no MAC option.
Finally, I grabbed a freeware utility called "FreeBase" for Windows, which said it could program all Lucent wireless gateways. At last, there was the option to add MAC addresses!
Judging by all the searching and experimenting I had to do to add a security option to my own gateway at home, it's no wonder the airports are having problems.