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Free Wireless Networks at Airports
WallytheWalrus writes "Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune is carrying an article about the installation of a wireless network throughout Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the first of five such airports across the nation to get a uniform wireless network system. The system, which cost only $250,000 to install, will be free to business travellers passing through the airport (who have the correct hardware), and available through a number of kiosks throughout the airport. One can only hope this is the first step towards bigger and bolder public wireless network projects."
the Austin airport also HAD a free wireless network.. but because of the .com fallout, they started charging like $6.95 a day or something... It's sometimes worth if you're sitting there waiting for your flight..
ChiefArcher
LAN Party in Terminal 8b!
Mad Apple promotion? Or useful technology?
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
ummmm... who cares? This is a public, untrusted network. So what if someone's snooping? Use IPSec if you don't want to be snooped.
sulli
RTFJ.
With the ever-growing use of wireless links for IP data, how much more difficult will it become to track down abusers?
If I sat in an airport with a laptop, I could use the (surely) fat pipe of the building to DoS some poor person, and who would catch me? The user reports to his isp, who gives it to the airport's upstream provider who give it to airport personnel. By that time, I'm way the hell out of there.
Of course, I'm using "I" in this post hypothetically - I hate DoS and the packet kiddies that do it, but what security is being put in place to prevent it?
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grep "xercist"
Unless the thing supports IPSec, it would be 100% useless for business travelers
Last time I was at the IETF, in Pittsburgh, Marconi was running the show and gave everyone 802.11 cards. I plugged mine into my notebook and fired up my Ethernet sniffer, which collected approximately 700+ webmail username/password pairs, over 100 POP logins, a good littering of telnet logins, a bunch of tunneled CIFS logins, and other assorted good stuff. Enough to crack into a user account at a large portion of the represented telco R&D firms. What I learned at IETF that year: the telecommunications world was still too stupid to be allowed to own wireless ethernet.
That was the IETF. This is an airport. IPSEC? Nah. It's easier to jail the occasional teenager for "sniffing" than it is to actually fix the problem.
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You're reading Managed Agreement.
Big mistakes for terrorists:
Asking airport officials how to log on to your "al-Qaida Online" account over the wireless link.
Complaining that you can't talk to your "buddy" Osama even though he's on your buddy list.
Receiving and watching a Quicktime video with instructions for committing a terrorist act -- while sitting in the boarding area.
Having your laptop announce "You've Got Jihad!" while in the terminal.
The number of people who leave open shares on their Wintel laptops is ridiculous, as they are used to being behind NAT firewalls and other hard-shelled security, deep in the corporate intranet. Then they move these absolutely defenseless laptops into a completely unsecured network via an Orinoco WaveLAN card--Hilarity ensues.
A public wireless network with a revolving roster of addled sales execs is a veritable shooting gallery, the proverbial barrel full of fish!
Anyway, I will not be surprised when suits rush back to the home office after a stopover in Minneapolis, their laptops having mysteriously come down with the clap.
Well, what about it? How different is wireless from an airport different from that shared ethernet in the airport hotel? Or having folks check in from those ubiquitious web terminals in airports that half of the time have cache's full of info?
Yes, it is possible that sitting there in the terminal your stream will get intercepted. So understand/teach others that these aren't secure, that pluggin in in *any* public pace isn't gonna be secure and certainly not at a client's office etc. Use a tunnel back to the home/corporate proxy server or don't go near any important content and *don't* use any passwords.
But don't go getting all upset of wireless and airports, it's not really different from all of the others.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Perhaps this is just a strategy of dealing with the increased delay the FAA is forcing on the airlines?
I stoped at London Heathrow a few weeks ago and they have these "XPOD" kiosks or something similar, well they run windows 98 and connect with wireless. I pulled out my NAI Sniffer and found the ip address range 10.10.10.x/24 (if I remeber) then I assosiated myself to the network and found that all the kiosk machines have the 'c' drive shared out - full accsess! and NO PASSWORD. At least the internet connection was a bit more secure, they went threw a proxy server and when I tried to brouse the internet from my laptop all I got was the xpod logo.
.cap files. kruczkowski @ hotmail.com
JKF at New York has some small network, but nothing intresting and no internet.
Frankfurt (Germany) has also some network but also nothing fun, all I see is novell broadcasts.
If anyone want, I still have the NAI
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I have been reading about everyone screaming 'ohh my god! its wireless! its not secure!' or 'the script kiddies are going to go nuts!' You _CAN_ secure this and make sure it is only used by 'good' people (i.e. not the #isosRus user) by simply only allowing IPSec connections out to the world this pretty much elimiates the script kiddie wishing to use 'mad bandwidth' to DoS down someone else and because all the users will be connecting to the rest of the world over a VPN to there office you dont really have to worry about them attacking things from the airport network. Another point of view would be to require users to 'check-in' by setting up a DHCP server that hands out 'dead ips' that can only access one web page. That web page would be a registration page where the fills in the blanks (MAC address, cell phone number, home address, etc..) then a back end script creates a reservation or some other method to privide a 'live' ip for that user to access the outside world. Said airport might also consider (if said airport is not blocking everything but lets say port 80, 443, and IPSec) going with the transparent proxy server that one of the other users talked about. Said airport could also use the customers airline ticket SN# to track the person. You could goto great trouble to attempt to curve the abuse by a few people.. Or you could watch for abuse and disable that MAC address on the network. At any rate. Cheers.
Real men don't use GUIs.
Why would you be bending over for a revolutionary Old School rap act? I mean, Dr. Dre was in N.W.A. and, oh yeah, the Napster thing...
Oh, you mean Northwest Airlines! Silly me.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Second, there are security concerns and as you pointed out, these are two fold. We don't want people snooping the airlines system. On the other hand if we're using the system to say, pre-pay for a rental car at the destination, we don't want people snooping credit card numbers either. There has been a lot of talk in the past about insecure 802.11 networks. It was my impression that these networks were configured incorrectly, and that it is possible (with later high bit key tech) to have a secure network. If the airports were to offer a good secure network, I think it would be of great benefit to flyers.
And then there are all the fun apps like being able to monitor arrivals and departures from your palm. As well as gate changes and whatnot. These can be as insecure as you like because it's really just another way of disseminating public information.
In all I think it'll be a good thing, with problems at first, but will become the norm in time. As far as The Man snooping the network, I think you'll get that no matter where you go. Don't not use a great public utility for that reason alone.
Singapore Changi Airport has offered free wireless Internet access for quite some time now. Hong Kong Airport also offers it, but not free.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Being a resident of the Twin Cities, and an occasional traveler, I find it somewhat amazing that they're offering wireless at all. Not much to say about that.. it could be nice.
However, it's going to be somewhat worthless to offer your travelers wireless without also giving them a place to plug in your laptop. Yes, I know laptops have batteries and don't have to be plugged in to be used. However, if you're like me, you hoard your battery's power for the actual flight instead of using it in the terminal. It *IS* possible to plug in at the terminal, but outlets are far and few in between, and you have to work around the rechargeable golf carts (or whatever they call those things) and other laptop users.
Lastly, with all the other concerns they have at airports these days, I am doubly amazed that they have the time to think about this. Not that I mind, it just makes me wonder.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I think it's fishy as hell. As 802.11 adoption increases, profits go through the floor. Or they charge for IPSec separately from other protocols, and people develop work-arounds. Meanwhile, JoeHaxor is downloading .isos all day and tying up the service.
Anyone want to bet on how quickly they stop giving away 802.11 free (or ask the airport for a bailout)? Three months?
sulli
RTFJ.
Can't these be abused by mass UCE mailers?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }