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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.
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.
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.