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> He said that the plane's pilot made an announcement, telling passengers that the fighter jets had been scrambled because of a distress signal that had been se
by legitster 3y ago
> He said that the plane's pilot made an announcement, telling passengers that the fighter jets had been scrambled because of a distress signal that had been sent by mistake.
> Mr Verma's message was picked up by the UK security services who flagged it to Spanish authorities while the easyJet plane was still in the air.
> A court in Madrid heard it was assumed the message triggered alarm bells after being picked up via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network.
Emphasis mine. Something is really fishy here. We know that a fighter escort was dispatched for this flight, but it sounds like no one is on record that his message is what actually triggered the escort or how they would have even found it.
There's a non-zero chance that the Spanish authorities themselves do not know where the distress signal came from, and only found out about the message after they searched his phone. And they are trying to pin the cost of scrambling the jets on him when they really should be ringing up the UK government.
- mortenjorck 3y agoMost likely scenario I can imagine: While everything was TLS encrypted between all conversation participants and the Snapchat server (airport Wi-Fi is a non-sequitur here), Snapchat has some kind of PRISM-style setup that at least starts with a global keyword scanner for natsec-related triggers. That alone seems unlikely to have resulted in fighter jets scrambling. More likely, that keyword system feeds into a much more complex Palantir deployment or something that's cross-referencing a bunch of other factors and assigning a risk score. In this case, it was enough to get flagged for immediate review, someone thought the contextual elements were enough to escalate, and this set off a chain of actions leading to the fighter jets. There are likely thousands of terrorism jokes made over back-doored messaging systems every day, but sending one of those messages buys you a lottery ticket you certainly don’t want to win.
- whatshisface 3y agoYou seem to know a lot about security for someone with no interest in evading it. Good luck with your lottery ticket...
- dogma1138 3y agoSnapchat does not encrypt text messages only photos and video. Also the question of how many of those joke messages are being sent from an airport and have account meta data that can be tied to travel information (name, email, phone number). I wager far fewer that it may not make it into as much of a game of chance as you think.
- panarky 3y agoHuh? Snapchat uses TLS encryption for all data in transit, regardless of whether it's text, photos, or videos. This means that all forms of data are encrypted when they are being transmitted between your device and Snapchat's servers.
- dogma1138 3y agoNo E2EE means that they are able to look into messages, and unless they are doing key pinning which isn’t a given also susceptible to MITM.
- panarky 3y ago"does not encrypt" != "No E2EE"
- dogma1138 3y agoWhen you are talking about message encryption it’s rather clear, transport encryption can happen regardless of message encryption and overall is more easily defeated.
- davidbanham 3y agoI think you’re confusing transport layer security with end to end encryption. TLS prevents the people who run Gatwick airport wifi from reading the messages. E2EE would also do that, and would additionally prevent Snapchat themselves from reading the messages. The lack of E2EE does not imply a lack of TLS.
- panarky 3y ago> Most likely scenario ... That doesn't seem at all likely. Occam's Razor prefers explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. In this case, that would be someone in the airport reading his screen and turning him in, or someone in his private chat turning him in.
- martinflack 3y agoAnd in this scenario, it might not even have been an assessment of risk, but rather "just to mess with him". The reporting person may have thought it would be a funny prank to have him questioned by police over the message and that would be the end of it.
- g-b-r 3y agoIt doesn't seem so likely that a human in the airport happened to read his message, or that surveillance cameras at that airport OCR all peoples' phones (although I wouldn't be completely surprised if they did)
- gmerc 3y agoI’d imagine sending the message from an airport wifi IP would get it priority .
- ngu_khoi 3y agoNo
- ghaff 3y agoIt's a very odd story. The major intelligence services can be very capable but the idea that a person presumably not under surveillance would have a random chat message trigger the dispatch of two fighters in, what?, maybe two hours is hard to believe. I mean, how many messages a minute (second?) contain some keyword that would trigger filterss? I can believe someone in the Snapchat group took it seriously and called whatever the Brit equivalent of 911.
- dogma1138 3y agoSnapchat texts aren’t encrypted, you had a text about a bomb sent from an airport. So you have the threatening content, sensitive location, and likely sufficient account information which can be matched to a traveler list. How many messages a day do you think fit that criteria?
- ghaff 3y agoProbably more than you imagine. The sheer volume of Snapchat messages means that I can't imagine fewer than hundreds and maybe many more people being arrested/questioned for suspicious private messages from near sensitive locations on an annual basis.
- pests 3y agoHow did Snapchat scramble fighter jets?
- BizarroLand 3y agoUnencrypted web traffic sent from the airport's wifi. Yeah, that adds up. Should have either been on your cell plan or using E2E for stupid stuff like that.
- karmakaze 3y agoNot even e2e, just https (or anything using PKI root cert chain).
- xboxnolifes 3y ago