Sophos Cloud Optix
American Airlines Flight 136 from LAX to London was delayed on Sunday night after someone in the vicinity picked an inappropriate name for their Wi-Fi hotspot.
The drama began when a passenger on Flight 136 from Los Angeles International Airport to London Heathrow discovered a wireless connection named “Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork [sic].”
The passenger alerted a flight attendant who passed the concern over to the flight crew.
Passenger Kevin Simon told Daily Mail Online that the crew informed passengers there was a ‘minor security issue’ as the plane was held in position for an hour and a half before returning to the terminal gate.
While passengers were very much kept in the dark, learning what had happened later from the news, Simon did reveal how on-board security was alert to the situation, saying:
While at the baggage carousel a few passengers were talking, and a lady who had been near the front said that she was sitting near the air marshalls, and when the event happened, both of them jumped up and got busy, with one of them stationing himself in front of the cockpit door.
Fellow passenger and Head of Digital for the UK Government, Anthony Simon, took to social media to air his frustrations over the delay:
Thanks to the idiot who did this meaning I won't get back to London for another day.
Ultimately the flight, which was scheduled to depart at 7:50pm on Sunday, was delayed for 17 hours as investigators looked into possible threats. With none found, the flight was eventually cleared for departure at 1pm yesterday.
An American Airlines spokesman confirmed the flight was delayed “out of an abundance of caution” while local law enforcement said its investigation revealed that “no crime was committed and no further action will be taken.”
And even though no physical harm was caused, the disruption to the flight, passengers and airport were very real.
We know that the average person is not too fussy about the networks they connect to, as Sophos’s James Lyne discovered on his recent Warbiking tour.
While travelling around major cities such as London and San Francisco, Lyne discovered that thousands of people would connect to networks with names such as “FreePublicWiFi”, “Free Internet” and even “DO NOT CONNECT” with devices that were themselves poorly secured through the adoption of old security standards.
You can read 10 wireless security tips over on the Sophos website.
Hopefully, in this case, the owner of the ‘Al-Quida’ hotspot was nothing more than a misguided joker, proving that we cannot implicitly trust the names of Wi-Fi networks (and making the point that no security-related joke is ever funny in an airport where staff and police are required to investigate every potential breach of security).
Image of American Airlines plane licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy of Flickr user Embajada de EEUU en Paraguay.
What a stupid ass
An event like this shows again that the “war on terror” was lost a long time ago…
Given that the risk of terrorists is far less than dog bites, the appropriate response to this sort of thing should be laughter, not pissing your pants out of irrational and unjustified fear. Unless viewing the SSID of a LAN can induce psychosis, epilepsy, or some other state, what is the justification for canceling flights? We have now entered “Chicken Little” territory — authorities can no longer tell the difference between prudence and hysteria.
Statistically terror kills less people than ladder falls.The hysteria by dying from a terrorist is expensive and as someone here said, totally irrational.
We have the highest terror alert announced in Australia.at the moment. No terrorist has ever killed anyone here …can’t say the same for fast food.
“Never say never.” I think it would be reasonable to refer to the 1978 Hilton Hotel bombing in Sydney an act of terrorism. That killed three people.
Anthony Simon may have his opinions wrong about who the ‘idiot’ is. What is (by far!) more likely: a hotspot run by terrorists publicly proclaiming it is one, or some joker naming his hotspot this way (including spelling mistakes)? The person(s) deciding to keep the plane on the ground obviously did not ask that question; I propose giving him/her the label ‘idiot’.
Even you follow this weird reasoning by very weakly stating “Hopefully, in this case, the owner of the ‘Al-Quida’ hotspot was nothing more than a misguided joker,… ” It is not “hopefully”, it is “extremely likely”. Don’t feed the fear.
Seriously? Somoene thought that the name of a wireless network was a reason to ground a plane for 17 hours? By what concievable mechanism was there ever a threat? Or has Al Queda become like ‘Voldemort’ and if you see it written down you have to light your hair on fire and run around panicing?
Talk about making it easy for anyone with a grudge to cause havoc!
+1 bbusschots – My thoughts exactly. If we had relatively secure planes/cockpits, then who cares what wireless network someone may be running.
But if something untoward happened, there would be massive lawsuits by every family member affected. As long as we sue so frequently, and the awards are the equivilent of PowerBall, then common sense is out the window.
The only idiots are the overzealous, “zero tolerent” airline crew.
What in the world is so terroristic about a WiFi account named AL Qaeda?
The only idiots are the overzealous, ignorant airline crew member who took the name of a WiFi account as a terror attempt and the Tweet who blamed the person who created the WiFi name and not the crew members.
Surely it would have been quicker to locate the network’s owner and give them (say) 24 hours to correct their spelling mistakes…
The above comments are from people that have the same beliefs that people had pre 9/11. Obviously like any school should take bomb threats and someone running their mouth off about shooting the school up very seriously. So should airlines take things seriously. No matter how remote. A delay is a small price to pay to avoid the loss of a few thousand lives. Stop trolling and seek help.
How many people do you think can fit on a plane??
So naming your SSID “Connect2Explode” would be bad in a public place?
“Connect2Explode” would make a fine social experiment.