Free Wireless Networks at Airports

WallytheWalrus writes "Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune is carrying an article about the installation of a wireless network throughout Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the first of five such airports across the nation to get a uniform wireless network system. The system, which cost only $250,000 to install, will be free to business travellers passing through the airport (who have the correct hardware), and available through a number of kiosks throughout the airport. One can only hope this is the first step towards bigger and bolder public wireless network projects."

Austin Airport

the Austin airport also HAD a free wireless network.. but because of the .com fallout, they started charging like $6.95 a day or something... It's sometimes worth if you're sitting there waiting for your flight..

ChiefArcher

LAN PARTY

LAN Party in Terminal 8b!

Re:LAN PARTY

Just be careful about what you yell in the airport as you frag yer buddies...

"I'm gonna shoot yer ass off and take your big frazzin' gun!" you yell airport security get deployed on your position in force! ;)

=tkk

Re:I love it but...

ummmm... who cares? This is a public, untrusted network. So what if someone's snooping? Use IPSec if you don't want to be snooped.

Apple slogan...

"Use your Airport(tm) at the airport"?

Mad Apple promotion? Or useful technology?

Cryptnotic

Re:Well, that would be useless.

Unless the thing supports IPSec, it would be 100% useless for business travelers

Last time I was at the IETF, in Pittsburgh, Marconi was running the show and gave everyone 802.11 cards. I plugged mine into my notebook and fired up my Ethernet sniffer, which collected approximately 700+ webmail username/password pairs, over 100 POP logins, a good littering of telnet logins, a bunch of tunneled CIFS logins, and other assorted good stuff. Enough to crack into a user account at a large portion of the represented telco R&D firms. What I learned at IETF that year: the telecommunications world was still too stupid to be allowed to own wireless ethernet.

That was the IETF. This is an airport. IPSEC? Nah. It's easier to jail the occasional teenager for "sniffing" than it is to actually fix the problem.
--
You're reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org].

Abuse over wireless networks

With the ever-growing use of wireless links for IP data, how much more difficult will it become to track down abusers?
If I sat in an airport with a laptop, I could use the (surely) fat pipe of the building to DoS some poor person, and who would catch me? The user reports to his isp, who gives it to the airport's upstream provider who give it to airport personnel. By that time, I'm way the hell out of there.
Of course, I'm using "I" in this post hypothetically - I hate DoS and the packet kiddies that do it, but what security is being put in place to prevent it?

Low Budget Colocation!

See, this is how it works:

1. Find some little used broom closet in MSP.
2. Slap your (linux|*bsd) boxen in aforementioned closet with wireless cards.
3. Note which IP address your boxes pick up through DHCP, or better still have your boxes report their IP address to another of your boxes.
4. Walk away.
5. Remotely administer.

Anti-terrorism and wireless networks

Big mistakes for terrorists:

Asking airport officials how to log on to your "al-Qaida Online" account over the wireless link.

Complaining that you can't talk to your "buddy" Osama even though he's on your buddy list.

Receiving and watching a Quicktime video with instructions for committing a terrorist act -- while sitting in the boarding area.

Having your laptop announce "You've Got Jihad!" while in the terminal.

Flight delayed, laptop hacked.

The number of people who leave open shares on their Wintel laptops is ridiculous, as they are used to being behind NAT firewalls and other hard-shelled security, deep in the corporate intranet. Then they move these absolutely defenseless laptops into a completely unsecured network via an Orinoco WaveLAN card--Hilarity ensues.

A public wireless network with a revolving roster of addled sales execs is a veritable shooting gallery, the proverbial barrel full of fish!

Anyway, I will not be surprised when suits rush back to the home office after a stopover in Minneapolis, their laptops having mysteriously come down with the clap.

(in)Security

Everyone's first response to this is going to be "What about wireless security?"

Well, what about it? How different is wireless from an airport different from that shared ethernet in the airport hotel? Or having folks check in from those ubiquitious web terminals in airports that half of the time have cache's full of info?

Yes, it is possible that sitting there in the terminal your stream will get intercepted. So understand/teach others that these aren't secure, that pluggin in in *any* public pace isn't gonna be secure and certainly not at a client's office etc. Use a tunnel back to the home/corporate proxy server or don't go near any important content and *don't* use any passwords.

But don't go getting all upset of wireless and airports, it's not really different from all of the others.

Dealing with Delays..

Perhaps this is just a strategy of dealing with the increased delay the FAA is forcing on the airlines?

London Heathrow

I stoped at London Heathrow a few weeks ago and they have these "XPOD" kiosks or something similar, well they run windows 98 and connect with wireless. I pulled out my NAI Sniffer and found the ip address range 10.10.10.x/24 (if I remeber) then I assosiated myself to the network and found that all the kiosk machines have the 'c' drive shared out - full accsess! and NO PASSWORD. At least the internet connection was a bit more secure, they went threw a proxy server and when I tried to brouse the internet from my laptop all I got was the xpod logo.

JKF at New York has some small network, but nothing intresting and no internet.

Frankfurt (Germany) has also some network but also nothing fun, all I see is novell broadcasts.

If anyone want, I still have the NAI .cap files. kruczkowski @ hotmail.com

Security this.. Security that..

I have been reading about everyone screaming 'ohh my god! its wireless! its not secure!' or 'the script kiddies are going to go nuts!' You _CAN_ secure this and make sure it is only used by 'good' people (i.e. not the #isosRus user) by simply only allowing IPSec connections out to the world this pretty much elimiates the script kiddie wishing to use 'mad bandwidth' to DoS down someone else and because all the users will be connecting to the rest of the world over a VPN to there office you dont really have to worry about them attacking things from the airport network. Another point of view would be to require users to 'check-in' by setting up a DHCP server that hands out 'dead ips' that can only access one web page. That web page would be a registration page where the fills in the blanks (MAC address, cell phone number, home address, etc..) then a back end script creates a reservation or some other method to privide a 'live' ip for that user to access the outside world. Said airport might also consider (if said airport is not blocking everything but lets say port 80, 443, and IPSec) going with the transparent proxy server that one of the other users talked about. Said airport could also use the customers airline ticket SN# to track the person. You could goto great trouble to attempt to curve the abuse by a few people.. Or you could watch for abuse and disable that MAC address on the network. At any rate. Cheers.

Already exists in Asia

Singapore Changi Airport [airport.com.sg] has offered free wireless Internet access for quite some time now. Hong Kong Airport [thestandard.com.au] also offers it, but not free.

Wireless?! What about power???

Being a resident of the Twin Cities, and an occasional traveler, I find it somewhat amazing that they're offering wireless at all. Not much to say about that.. it could be nice.

However, it's going to be somewhat worthless to offer your travelers wireless without also giving them a place to plug in your laptop. Yes, I know laptops have batteries and don't have to be plugged in to be used. However, if you're like me, you hoard your battery's power for the actual flight instead of using it in the terminal. It *IS* possible to plug in at the terminal, but outlets are far and few in between, and you have to work around the rechargeable golf carts (or whatever they call those things) and other laptop users.

Lastly, with all the other concerns they have at airports these days, I am doubly amazed that they have the time to think about this. Not that I mind, it just makes me wonder.

Weird

I was going to post a "RTFA" saying that you will have to pay for it, then I went and RTFA'd, and found that this is a very odd setup. 802.11 connecitivity will be free, but the thing will make money. How you ask? Because iPass, the ISP, will be charging for wired and kiosk access (I guess) and "access to corporate networks" (I think this means managed VPNs).

I think it's fishy as hell. As 802.11 adoption increases, profits go through the floor. Or they charge for IPSec separately from other protocols, and people develop work-arounds. Meanwhile, JoeHaxor is downloading .isos all day and tying up the service.

Anyone want to bet on how quickly they stop giving away 802.11 free (or ask the airport for a bailout)? Three months?

SPAM Abuse

Can't these be abused by mass UCE mailers?