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While interesting, I would have an uneasy feeling messing with the WIFI AP on an airplane. Perhaps there is a U.S. law this type of conduct would fall under spe

While interesting, I would have an uneasy feeling messing with the WIFI AP on an airplane. Perhaps there is a U.S. law this type of conduct would fall under specific to being on an airplane?

gravitas 7y ago
The author does not "mess with the WIFI AP on the plane", they exploit a weakness in the design (failure by viasat to maintain an checksum IP mapping to their domain for the captive service) to simply bypass a trivial TLS header check in order to tunnel their traffic.
- behrlich 7y ago
  This is almost definitely “hacking” under federal law.
  - gravitas 7y ago
    The person I'm replying to specifically said "mess with the WIFI AP" in order to present this as harmful or dangerous (FUD), it is not. It's a trivial header check bypass - whether or not that is "hacking" is a question for lawyers and a judge.
    - behrlich 7y ago
      Right. I think all he’s trying to say is that it might be worse to hack something on a plane vs some other kind of computer system. I don’t think they were implying harm was being done to the ap. Colloquially I would definitely call this messing with the ap :)
    - pessimizer 7y ago
      I was just bypassing a some trivial key check on the door. To say I was "messing with the door" is FUD, and whether I was breaking and entering is a question for lawyers and a judge.
      - judge2020 7y ago
        The owner gave me a key to the lobby so I could pay to get an all-access key. As it turns out, I can just walk past the lobby and that key actually opens all doors in the building. Whether or not it's illegal to use it to access whatever I want is a question for lawyers and a judge.
        rebuilder 7y ago
        That's not what's happening here. This is more like trying the key on every door, finding a cleaning closet unlocked and crawling through the ventilation ducts to get in.
        judge2020 7y ago
        I think it's pretty close to the reality. The lobby is wide open (viasat's payment gateway), but if you just use the viasat lobby key (viasat.com SNI) on any other door (IP address) it allows you access. They could prevent you from getting to the doors in the first place (whitelisting MAC address to access anything other than a whitelist of IPs instead of just TLS SNI whitelisting) but they don't, as it's especially evident when they allow other protocols when the connection is not encrypted.
        rebuilder 7y ago
        Try this: The lobby is not locked. Neither are any of the doors leading out from it. There is a cashier in the lobby and a sign with ticket prices for the different doors.
        Zak 7y ago
        In that situation, opening the doors without paying is illegal. It would be treated as trespassing or theft of services. You don't have the right to use other peoples' stuff without permission just because it's easy to do.
    - Zak 7y ago
      Judges tend to be less impressed by technicalities than seems to be commonly believed. If you know that a network operator intends to route traffic only for paying customers, and you intentionally trick its router into routing your traffic without payment, the judge will probably see that as intentional unauthorized access. I think that's legally reasonable, almost. It's the intent that matters here; if my use of Cloudflare DNS instead of what your DHCP server provides for performance and privacy reasons happens to bypass your insecurely implemented captive portal that asks for payment, there's no intent. If I employ a complex tunneling scheme specifically designed to bypass your payment check, that's theft. Where I do have a problem with the law is that its digital nature is given special treatment and greatly enhanced penalties. If I walk into a store and steal a USB Wifi adapter worth $20, I have committed a misdemeanor. If I'm caught, I'll probably be given a summons, not arrested, and my penalty will probably be a fine or community service. If I use that adapter to steal access to $20 worth of in-flight Wifi, I've committed a felony, for which the penalty includes loss of civil rights, and probable incarceration.
  - mightybyte 7y ago
    IANAL and all that, but my perception is that "hacking" is usually about breaking into someone else's computer / breaching someone else's privacy / accessing data that isn't yours / etc. If that perception is accurate, then I think it's really a stretch to call this "hacking". You're just moving bits around on network infrastructure designed to move bits around. Maybe I'm just looking for a loophole because wishful thinking, but this seems like a decent argument to me. Now, you could be violating their terms of service. But in this case there may be a good argument that you never accepted their terms of service since you wouldn't have had to click the "accept" button to do what the post describes.
    - sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
      Read up on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act The CFAA is pretty broad, and definitely controversial because of it. Look up Aaron Swartz's tragic case.
    - dehrmann 7y ago
      The old colloquial term for this is "phreaking."
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
  This is absolutely circumventing the intended usage of the system.
- kristianc 7y ago
  This is hacking under federal law, as it should be. Likewise that if I break into your house by merely exploiting a weakness in the design of the lock, I am still committing a crime.
  - Dayshine 7y ago
    If someone charges for tours of part of their house, has two prices of tour, and you change the colour of your badge to let you access the part you haven't paid for, is that a crime?
    - jfk13 7y ago
      Sounds like some form of fraud to me. What's the difference between that and simply forging a ticket to an event instead of buying one? Or forging a currency note?
      - Dayshine 7y ago
        OK, the better example from further down. You realise your badge lets you into areas of the premium tour, it opens all doors, not just the ones you paid for it to open. And even if it is fraud of some kind, the bar for charging someone with fraud (instead of just suing for damages) is fairly high...
    - MikeKusold 7y ago
      Yes. It’s trespassing.
    - Asooka 7y ago
      Well yes, but bandwidth is practically free anyway. I'm not actually stealing computer resources. It's more akin to looking at the Mona Lisa through one of the Louvre's windows using a pair of binoculars.
pessimizer 7y ago
My guess would be that getting caught doing this could get you federal terrorism charges. I don't even think it's a safe assumption that the network is isolated or properly insulated from pilot instrumentation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  If that assumption isn't safe, then neither is the plane. Having ANY access AT ALL whether via "hidden" backdoor or authorized login to plane instrumentation from the WiFi would be an insane setup. Just because they're both invisible to you doesn't mean they're connected in some way. Could you imagine the attack surface? We'd be hearing about terrorist attacks leveraging that design flaw.
xedeon 7y ago
Please actually read the article. The author did not “mess” with WiFi radio. It was all done on the network layer.
- ThinkingGuy 7y ago
  How well do you trust that 12 jury members would understand the distinction?
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    That wasn't the point OP was making.
- grepthisab 7y ago
  No way to convince a jury of this, for real. Not worth the risk of trying to explain the distinction versus being prosecuted.
cosmodisk 7y ago
Was going to write the same. Prosecutors would have easy time convincing judge that hacking+ doing so while airborne should result in many years behind the bars, especially knowing how punitive the legal system in the US can be. The article itself is very interesting though.
Pneumaticat 7y ago
A good point. To be fair, though, even Lifehacker has posted a similar writeup [1] (linked in the article) and I don't think they've been threatened. Getting caught in the air - now, that's a different story ;) [1]: https://lifehacker.com/get-free-unlimited-wi-fi-on-flights-and-bypass-paywall-1788148516 https://lifehacker.com/get-free-unlimited-wi-fi-on-flights-a...
- gpvos 7y ago
  Getting caught in the air seems nigh impossible, since by using this trick you aren't giving them any way to identify you.
  - bspammer 7y ago
    They'd have your stunnel server IP, so if they were really, really determined they could probably track you down by forcing your ISP/VPS provider to identify you. I doubt they'd bother for $45 worth of WiFi, but personally I would err on the side of caution.
goblin89 7y ago
While in general bypassing Wi-Fi restrictions is indeed dubious from legal standpoint, it’s most likely as safe on an airplane as anywhere else. If in-flight Wi-Fi provider’s AP was in any way part of aircraft control system network, I would be surprised if overseeing such a design flaw weren’t a crime.
dboreham 7y ago
It's also, you know, wrong. Old fashioned wrong. Stealing.

While interesting, I would have an uneasy feeling messing with the WIFI AP on an airplane. Perhaps there is a U.S. law this type of conduct would fall under specific to being on an airplane?

gravitas 7y ago

The author does not "mess with the WIFI AP on the plane", they exploit a weakness in the design (failure by viasat to maintain an checksum IP mapping to their domain for the captive service) to simply bypass a trivial TLS header check in order to tunnel their traffic.

behrlich 7y ago
This is almost definitely “hacking” under federal law.
- gravitas 7y ago
  The person I'm replying to specifically said "mess with the WIFI AP" in order to present this as harmful or dangerous (FUD), it is not. It's a trivial header check bypass - whether or not that is "hacking" is a question for lawyers and a judge.
  - behrlich 7y ago
    Right. I think all he’s trying to say is that it might be worse to hack something on a plane vs some other kind of computer system. I don’t think they were implying harm was being done to the ap. Colloquially I would definitely call this messing with the ap :)
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    I was just bypassing a some trivial key check on the door. To say I was "messing with the door" is FUD, and whether I was breaking and entering is a question for lawyers and a judge.
    - judge2020 7y ago
      The owner gave me a key to the lobby so I could pay to get an all-access key. As it turns out, I can just walk past the lobby and that key actually opens all doors in the building. Whether or not it's illegal to use it to access whatever I want is a question for lawyers and a judge.
      - rebuilder 7y ago
        That's not what's happening here. This is more like trying the key on every door, finding a cleaning closet unlocked and crawling through the ventilation ducts to get in.
        judge2020 7y ago
        I think it's pretty close to the reality. The lobby is wide open (viasat's payment gateway), but if you just use the viasat lobby key (viasat.com SNI) on any other door (IP address) it allows you access. They could prevent you from getting to the doors in the first place (whitelisting MAC address to access anything other than a whitelist of IPs instead of just TLS SNI whitelisting) but they don't, as it's especially evident when they allow other protocols when the connection is not encrypted.
        rebuilder 7y ago
        Try this: The lobby is not locked. Neither are any of the doors leading out from it. There is a cashier in the lobby and a sign with ticket prices for the different doors.
        Zak 7y ago
        In that situation, opening the doors without paying is illegal. It would be treated as trespassing or theft of services. You don't have the right to use other peoples' stuff without permission just because it's easy to do.
  - Zak 7y ago
    Judges tend to be less impressed by technicalities than seems to be commonly believed. If you know that a network operator intends to route traffic only for paying customers, and you intentionally trick its router into routing your traffic without payment, the judge will probably see that as intentional unauthorized access. I think that's legally reasonable, almost. It's the intent that matters here; if my use of Cloudflare DNS instead of what your DHCP server provides for performance and privacy reasons happens to bypass your insecurely implemented captive portal that asks for payment, there's no intent. If I employ a complex tunneling scheme specifically designed to bypass your payment check, that's theft. Where I do have a problem with the law is that its digital nature is given special treatment and greatly enhanced penalties. If I walk into a store and steal a USB Wifi adapter worth $20, I have committed a misdemeanor. If I'm caught, I'll probably be given a summons, not arrested, and my penalty will probably be a fine or community service. If I use that adapter to steal access to $20 worth of in-flight Wifi, I've committed a felony, for which the penalty includes loss of civil rights, and probable incarceration.
- mightybyte 7y ago
  IANAL and all that, but my perception is that "hacking" is usually about breaking into someone else's computer / breaching someone else's privacy / accessing data that isn't yours / etc. If that perception is accurate, then I think it's really a stretch to call this "hacking". You're just moving bits around on network infrastructure designed to move bits around. Maybe I'm just looking for a loophole because wishful thinking, but this seems like a decent argument to me. Now, you could be violating their terms of service. But in this case there may be a good argument that you never accepted their terms of service since you wouldn't have had to click the "accept" button to do what the post describes.
  - sfkdjf9j3j 7y ago
    Read up on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act The CFAA is pretty broad, and definitely controversial because of it. Look up Aaron Swartz's tragic case.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    The old colloquial term for this is "phreaking."
eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
This is absolutely circumventing the intended usage of the system.
kristianc 7y ago
This is hacking under federal law, as it should be. Likewise that if I break into your house by merely exploiting a weakness in the design of the lock, I am still committing a crime.
- Dayshine 7y ago
  If someone charges for tours of part of their house, has two prices of tour, and you change the colour of your badge to let you access the part you haven't paid for, is that a crime?
  - jfk13 7y ago
    Sounds like some form of fraud to me. What's the difference between that and simply forging a ticket to an event instead of buying one? Or forging a currency note?
    - Dayshine 7y ago
      OK, the better example from further down. You realise your badge lets you into areas of the premium tour, it opens all doors, not just the ones you paid for it to open. And even if it is fraud of some kind, the bar for charging someone with fraud (instead of just suing for damages) is fairly high...
  - MikeKusold 7y ago
    Yes. It’s trespassing.
  - Asooka 7y ago
    Well yes, but bandwidth is practically free anyway. I'm not actually stealing computer resources. It's more akin to looking at the Mona Lisa through one of the Louvre's windows using a pair of binoculars.

pessimizer 7y ago

My guess would be that getting caught doing this could get you federal terrorism charges. I don't even think it's a safe assumption that the network is isolated or properly insulated from pilot instrumentation.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_underfl0w_ 7y ago
If that assumption isn't safe, then neither is the plane. Having ANY access AT ALL whether via "hidden" backdoor or authorized login to plane instrumentation from the WiFi would be an insane setup. Just because they're both invisible to you doesn't mean they're connected in some way. Could you imagine the attack surface? We'd be hearing about terrorist attacks leveraging that design flaw.

xedeon 7y ago

Please actually read the article. The author did not “mess” with WiFi radio. It was all done on the network layer.

ThinkingGuy 7y ago
How well do you trust that 12 jury members would understand the distinction?
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  That wasn't the point OP was making.
grepthisab 7y ago
No way to convince a jury of this, for real. Not worth the risk of trying to explain the distinction versus being prosecuted.

cosmodisk 7y ago

Was going to write the same. Prosecutors would have easy time convincing judge that hacking+ doing so while airborne should result in many years behind the bars, especially knowing how punitive the legal system in the US can be. The article itself is very interesting though.

Pneumaticat 7y ago

A good point. To be fair, though, even Lifehacker has posted a similar writeup [1] (linked in the article) and I don't think they've been threatened. Getting caught in the air - now, that's a different story ;) [1]: https://lifehacker.com/get-free-unlimited-wi-fi-on-flights-and-bypass-paywall-1788148516 https://lifehacker.com/get-free-unlimited-wi-fi-on-flights-a...

gpvos 7y ago
Getting caught in the air seems nigh impossible, since by using this trick you aren't giving them any way to identify you.
- bspammer 7y ago
  They'd have your stunnel server IP, so if they were really, really determined they could probably track you down by forcing your ISP/VPS provider to identify you. I doubt they'd bother for $45 worth of WiFi, but personally I would err on the side of caution.

goblin89 7y ago

While in general bypassing Wi-Fi restrictions is indeed dubious from legal standpoint, it’s most likely as safe on an airplane as anywhere else. If in-flight Wi-Fi provider’s AP was in any way part of aircraft control system network, I would be surprised if overseeing such a design flaw weren’t a crime.

dboreham 7y ago

It's also, you know, wrong. Old fashioned wrong. Stealing.