Rogue Wi-Fi spotted mid-flight on Delta Air Lines packed with DEF CON hackers
Never share a metal tube at 30,000 feet with hundreds of cyber geeks heading home from the world's biggest hacking conference unless you enjoy digital panic mid-air.
Flight DL591 was cruising peacefully from Las Vegas to Atlanta on a Boeing 757 carrying 199 passengers and six crew members. The problem started when crew members spotted a suspicious wireless hotspot dubbed 'Delta WiFi Fast' masquerading right next to the official in-flight network.
Flight attendants and pilots immediately panicked, sending emergency messages to airline security via the Airframes system. Suspecting an active digital attack, the crew completely shut down the airplane's official Wi-Fi for thirty minutes to protect everyone onboard from potential intercept attacks.
The timing was anything but coincidental: the flight departed immediately following DEF CON 34, the planet's most notorious gathering of ethical and unethical security researchers. The fake network strongly resembled a classic Evil Twin attack designed to lure unsuspecting travelers into a trap and harvest login credentials.
Airlines spend billions on physical safety only to be completely baffled by a bored nerd with a pocket router. The cybersecurity world preaches ethical behavior, yet turning a transcontinental flight into an unauthorized penetration-testing lab seems way too tempting for someone with a laptop.
Source: techcrunch.com
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