13 ms·

The world is astoundingly safe that these sorts of thing don't happen all the time. Anyone who could light a cigarette could start wildfires all over Californi

The world is astoundingly safe that these sorts of thing don't happen all the time. Anyone who could light a cigarette could start wildfires all over California and many other places during the summer. Anyone who can buy a GPS jammer could disrupt one of the busiest airports in the world. With all the misanthropes out there you'd think chaos would happen more often. Glad it doesn't.

praptak 3y ago
Up until a point anyone with a knife could hijack a plane and fly it into a building.
- noman-land 3y ago
  Ceramic and plastic knives exist and could easily be smuggled aboard an airplane. I think the key insight is that most people don't want to do mass harm and instead just want to live in peaceful freedom and do their own thing.
  - baud147258 3y ago
    now the pilots have learned that if there's a person with a knife aboard the plane, they won't open the cockpit doors to avoid a potential hijacking and more casualties. And passengers know that if hijackers take control of the plane, the hijacker might crash it somewhere instead of holding the passengers and crew hostage, like it was done with plane hijackings before 9/11 and might fight back. So with the example of the 9/11 attacks, the situation has changed enough that a plane hijacking with a knife is much more unlikely
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Hijacking? Yes. Causing mass death and terror? No.
      - thejazzman 3y ago
        That really has nothing to do with being on airplane though, does it? There are endless places where you can get within stabbing distance of a group of people. I'd actually expect a plane to the one of the absolute safest places, because like others said, everyone on that place has just become a victim. It doesn't even matter if you like the person being victimized, you're gonna exploit that distraction and beat the fuck out of the dude. In public people are much quicker to just run away and keep themselves safe.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    They literally give you a metal steak knife if you sit in First Class. Terror Cell can't afford First Class? Just walk to one of the restaurants inside the terminal and take a steak knife before you get on the plane. The TSA shenanigan's are wild... security theater on an entirely different level.
epilys 3y ago
There was a time you could just walk around with a radio receiver and spy on everyone's phonecalls (IMEI stingray). Iirc it's not possible/that easy anymore with LTE.
- livueta 3y ago
  AFAIK you can still do passive IMSI sniffing, which isn't full content but is quite interesting metadata.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    Yeah, I’m going to need a write up/video on this… (Not saying you’re lying, I just want to learn more!)
    - livueta 3y ago
      I'll do you one better: For GSM, basic IMSI sniffing: https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher (usable with cheap SDRs) For LTE, basic IMSI sniffing: https://github.com/JiaoXianjun/LTE-Cell-Scanner https://github.com/JiaoXianjun/LTE-Cell-Scanner (usable with cheap SDRs) For LTE, full-on sniffing of all unencrypted metadata: https://github.com/SysSec-KAIST/LTESniffer https://github.com/SysSec-KAIST/LTESniffer (generally requires fancy SDRs with GPSDO) Can vouch that the first and second repos definitely worked as of about a year ago, but haven't personally tried since then. I don't have a USRP X310 (yet!) so can't personally speak to the fancy one.
      - landemva 3y ago
        Yes, $9353 is beyond my hobby budget. https://www.ettus.com/all-products/X310-KIT https://www.ettus.com/all-products/X310-KIT
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  stingrays just force the device down to 2G and capture that
lxgr 3y ago
> Anyone who can buy a GPS jammer could disrupt one of the busiest airports in the world. Fortunately, that one is not quite the case – the aviation industry is incredibly safety-conscious and does not allow relying on GPS exclusively. For both en-route navigation and landing, every plane will have at least one fallback system available (usually ground-based radionavigation aides such as VORs or DMEs or inertial navigation systems, which is also what was used for navigation during ocean crossings before there was GPS), and in fact, these other systems are seeing more use than you might assume: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17987/usaf-is-jamming-gps-in-the-western-u-s-for-largest-ever-red-flag-air-war-exercise https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17987/usaf-is-jamming-...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Landing is moving away from ILS towards GBAS (TLDR computed corrections for high precision local positioning in 4D space within ~30km of the install), provided over unencrypted VHF. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gnss/laas/howitworks https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at... https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GBAS_Fundamentals https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GBAS_Fundamentals https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/products-and-services/product/hardware-and-systems/sensors/smartpath-ground-based-augmentation-system https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/products-and-services/...
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Unencrypted does not mean that the plane avionics will just accept any input without performing plausibility checks. Even for "plain" (i.e. unaugmented) GPS, there's countermeasures, starting from simple physical ones (e.g. directional antennas leveraging the fact that GPS satellites are usually located above the airplane and not below or inside it), up to complicated logical filters checking all inputs for plausibility and rejecting suspicious signals and resulting position fixes. Galileo even supports message authentication, which thwarts everything other than (very sophisticated) real-time signal relaying attacks: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-algorithm-part-1/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-al...
bobthepanda 3y ago
A lot of wildfires are caused by fires that are improperly extinguished, which can be cigarettes. Sometimes it's even fireworks. July 4th consistently has the highest amount of human-caused wildfire. https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-JULY4/FIREWORKS/klvygaxxyvg/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-JULY4/FIREWORKS/klvygax...
sneak 3y ago
The TSA misses huge percentages of weapons during the passenger hand luggage searches in repeated blind testing. This means that the standard movie-plot methods of hijacking aircraft are ridiculously easy to carry out: just bring weapons on a plane. There's only a 50% chance you get caught. This means approximately no one wants to hijack airliners.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The TSA misses huge percentages of weapons during the passenger hand luggage searches in repeated blind testing. Between TSA missing most weapons while compulsively stealing cash, travelers would be far safer from genuine harm if the the agency didn't exist. ref: https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/ https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill... ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsa+seizes+cash https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsa+seizes+cash I just learned: It seems that state efforts to maximize gun possession have led to so many guns in airports - even TSA agents are starting to find them. ref: https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/11/01/52-million-tsa-fines-loaded-guns-airport/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/11/01...
  - edrxty 3y ago
    I suspect weapon and gun aren't the same thing here. I've accidentallied a ton of knives through TSA checkpoints because they're small and don't show up well against a my giant ball of cables, adapters, and chargers. OTOH, guns tend to be extremely obvious on x ray machines. They, at a minimum, have a fairly heavy steel barrel and the ammunition is solid lead and/or copper which looks like an extremely dark pattern of dots on an X ray. The springs also tend to stick out very strongly as they have a regular pattern and show up well. I'm sure they missed them before, but generally speaking I doubt it's something an attacker can even begin to count on.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Disassembling a firearm and sticking it's parts inside other regular carry-on items would be sufficient to get past most TSA screenings. I was blown away with my first First-Class flying experience. You go through all this TSA security theater, and then they hand you a real metal steak knife and glass stemware shortly after take off. You don't even need to bring weapons, they give them to you. TSA stuff is all for show. It makes some people feel safer that they had to take off their belt or something...
imhoguy 3y ago
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" – Hanlon's razor[0] Apart of some war zones or crime holes the world is quite safe and hospitable in general if one doesn't do stupid mistakes or really ask for problems. Every society has some form of agreed laws which try to correct a harmful behavior against them. Accidental radio interference or setting fire can happen out of simple stupitidy or incompetence. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- cf141q5325 3y ago
  The existence of that simplification is however often exploited. A lot of malice gets dressed as stupidity. Its also especially easy when stupidity is triggered maliciously.
vasco 3y ago
Most people have easy access to do a lot of havoc if they just wanted to. Drive into a sidewalk full of people, push a bunch of people onto an oncoming metro train car, there are so many ways that we don't even need to get into anything that needs technology.
brightlancer 3y ago
Humans are born selfish but also social. We're wired _against_ doing these kinds of things. And even when someone has a desire to cause mass harm, fear and self-interest usually stop them. I liked a comment a few days ago about hostile actors on the internet versus meatspace: "I asked about the security systems governing walking around in the hallway - was there any physical impediment preventing one person from punching, kicking, throwing a rock at another? Of course not - the security is socially constructed. Norms, consequences, etc, that on balance seemed to work out pretty effectively. I tried to make a case that security inside a local network of the size and scope of our school board was also ~90% social construction, but the student really struggled with it. There was a strong belief that because it was computers, you were expected to exploit it if it were vulnerable." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279333
sverhagen 3y ago
The plot of the next James Bond movie that is. And just for fun, its villain will slowly scratch their fingernails over the blackboard.

praptak 3y ago

Up until a point anyone with a knife could hijack a plane and fly it into a building.

noman-land 3y ago
Ceramic and plastic knives exist and could easily be smuggled aboard an airplane. I think the key insight is that most people don't want to do mass harm and instead just want to live in peaceful freedom and do their own thing.
- baud147258 3y ago
  now the pilots have learned that if there's a person with a knife aboard the plane, they won't open the cockpit doors to avoid a potential hijacking and more casualties. And passengers know that if hijackers take control of the plane, the hijacker might crash it somewhere instead of holding the passengers and crew hostage, like it was done with plane hijackings before 9/11 and might fight back. So with the example of the 9/11 attacks, the situation has changed enough that a plane hijacking with a knife is much more unlikely
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Hijacking? Yes. Causing mass death and terror? No.
    - thejazzman 3y ago
      That really has nothing to do with being on airplane though, does it? There are endless places where you can get within stabbing distance of a group of people. I'd actually expect a plane to the one of the absolute safest places, because like others said, everyone on that place has just become a victim. It doesn't even matter if you like the person being victimized, you're gonna exploit that distraction and beat the fuck out of the dude. In public people are much quicker to just run away and keep themselves safe.
- Alupis 3y ago
  They literally give you a metal steak knife if you sit in First Class. Terror Cell can't afford First Class? Just walk to one of the restaurants inside the terminal and take a steak knife before you get on the plane. The TSA shenanigan's are wild... security theater on an entirely different level.

epilys 3y ago

There was a time you could just walk around with a radio receiver and spy on everyone's phonecalls (IMEI stingray). Iirc it's not possible/that easy anymore with LTE.

livueta 3y ago
AFAIK you can still do passive IMSI sniffing, which isn't full content but is quite interesting metadata.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Yeah, I’m going to need a write up/video on this… (Not saying you’re lying, I just want to learn more!)
  - livueta 3y ago
    I'll do you one better: For GSM, basic IMSI sniffing: https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher (usable with cheap SDRs) For LTE, basic IMSI sniffing: https://github.com/JiaoXianjun/LTE-Cell-Scanner https://github.com/JiaoXianjun/LTE-Cell-Scanner (usable with cheap SDRs) For LTE, full-on sniffing of all unencrypted metadata: https://github.com/SysSec-KAIST/LTESniffer https://github.com/SysSec-KAIST/LTESniffer (generally requires fancy SDRs with GPSDO) Can vouch that the first and second repos definitely worked as of about a year ago, but haven't personally tried since then. I don't have a USRP X310 (yet!) so can't personally speak to the fancy one.
    - landemva 3y ago
      Yes, $9353 is beyond my hobby budget. https://www.ettus.com/all-products/X310-KIT https://www.ettus.com/all-products/X310-KIT
sidewndr46 3y ago
stingrays just force the device down to 2G and capture that

lxgr 3y ago

> Anyone who can buy a GPS jammer could disrupt one of the busiest airports in the world. Fortunately, that one is not quite the case – the aviation industry is incredibly safety-conscious and does not allow relying on GPS exclusively. For both en-route navigation and landing, every plane will have at least one fallback system available (usually ground-based radionavigation aides such as VORs or DMEs or inertial navigation systems, which is also what was used for navigation during ocean crossings before there was GPS), and in fact, these other systems are seeing more use than you might assume: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17987/usaf-is-jamming-gps-in-the-western-u-s-for-largest-ever-red-flag-air-war-exercise https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17987/usaf-is-jamming-...

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Landing is moving away from ILS towards GBAS (TLDR computed corrections for high precision local positioning in 4D space within ~30km of the install), provided over unencrypted VHF. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gnss/laas/howitworks https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at... https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GBAS_Fundamentals https://gssc.esa.int/navipedia/index.php/GBAS_Fundamentals https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/products-and-services/product/hardware-and-systems/sensors/smartpath-ground-based-augmentation-system https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/products-and-services/...
- lxgr 3y ago
  Unencrypted does not mean that the plane avionics will just accept any input without performing plausibility checks. Even for "plain" (i.e. unaugmented) GPS, there's countermeasures, starting from simple physical ones (e.g. directional antennas leveraging the fact that GPS satellites are usually located above the airplane and not below or inside it), up to complicated logical filters checking all inputs for plausibility and rejecting suspicious signals and resulting position fixes. Galileo even supports message authentication, which thwarts everything other than (very sophisticated) real-time signal relaying attacks: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-algorithm-part-1/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileos-authentication-al...

bobthepanda 3y ago

A lot of wildfires are caused by fires that are improperly extinguished, which can be cigarettes. Sometimes it's even fireworks. July 4th consistently has the highest amount of human-caused wildfire. https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-JULY4/FIREWORKS/klvygaxxyvg/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-JULY4/FIREWORKS/klvygax...

sneak 3y ago

The TSA misses huge percentages of weapons during the passenger hand luggage searches in repeated blind testing. This means that the standard movie-plot methods of hijacking aircraft are ridiculously easy to carry out: just bring weapons on a plane. There's only a 50% chance you get caught. This means approximately no one wants to hijack airliners.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> The TSA misses huge percentages of weapons during the passenger hand luggage searches in repeated blind testing. Between TSA missing most weapons while compulsively stealing cash, travelers would be far safer from genuine harm if the the agency didn't exist. ref: https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill-the-tsa/ https://reason.com/2021/11/19/after-20-years-of-failure-kill... ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsa+seizes+cash https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsa+seizes+cash I just learned: It seems that state efforts to maximize gun possession have led to so many guns in airports - even TSA agents are starting to find them. ref: https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/11/01/52-million-tsa-fines-loaded-guns-airport/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2022/11/01...
- edrxty 3y ago
  I suspect weapon and gun aren't the same thing here. I've accidentallied a ton of knives through TSA checkpoints because they're small and don't show up well against a my giant ball of cables, adapters, and chargers. OTOH, guns tend to be extremely obvious on x ray machines. They, at a minimum, have a fairly heavy steel barrel and the ammunition is solid lead and/or copper which looks like an extremely dark pattern of dots on an X ray. The springs also tend to stick out very strongly as they have a regular pattern and show up well. I'm sure they missed them before, but generally speaking I doubt it's something an attacker can even begin to count on.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Disassembling a firearm and sticking it's parts inside other regular carry-on items would be sufficient to get past most TSA screenings. I was blown away with my first First-Class flying experience. You go through all this TSA security theater, and then they hand you a real metal steak knife and glass stemware shortly after take off. You don't even need to bring weapons, they give them to you. TSA stuff is all for show. It makes some people feel safer that they had to take off their belt or something...

imhoguy 3y ago

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" – Hanlon's razor[0] Apart of some war zones or crime holes the world is quite safe and hospitable in general if one doesn't do stupid mistakes or really ask for problems. Every society has some form of agreed laws which try to correct a harmful behavior against them. Accidental radio interference or setting fire can happen out of simple stupitidy or incompetence. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

cf141q5325 3y ago
The existence of that simplification is however often exploited. A lot of malice gets dressed as stupidity. Its also especially easy when stupidity is triggered maliciously.

vasco 3y ago

Most people have easy access to do a lot of havoc if they just wanted to. Drive into a sidewalk full of people, push a bunch of people onto an oncoming metro train car, there are so many ways that we don't even need to get into anything that needs technology.

brightlancer 3y ago

Humans are born selfish but also social. We're wired _against_ doing these kinds of things. And even when someone has a desire to cause mass harm, fear and self-interest usually stop them. I liked a comment a few days ago about hostile actors on the internet versus meatspace: "I asked about the security systems governing walking around in the hallway - was there any physical impediment preventing one person from punching, kicking, throwing a rock at another? Of course not - the security is socially constructed. Norms, consequences, etc, that on balance seemed to work out pretty effectively. I tried to make a case that security inside a local network of the size and scope of our school board was also ~90% social construction, but the student really struggled with it. There was a strong belief that because it was computers, you were expected to exploit it if it were vulnerable." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279333

sverhagen 3y ago

The plot of the next James Bond movie that is. And just for fun, its villain will slowly scratch their fingernails over the blackboard.