30,000 Feet and Someone's Already Sniffing the Hay
Oh good. A plane full of wolves decided to practice on each other. I'm so shocked. Truly. Wake me up when something surprising happens.
So here's the situation. A Delta flight leaving Las Vegas, stuffed to the overhead bins with DEF CON attendees, apparently had an unauthorized Wi-Fi network pop up mid-flight. Someone on board was running a deauthentication attack, knocking other passengers off the legitimate cabin network and presumably doing what wolves do when they think nobody's watching.
A plane. Full of hackers. And someone thought "yes, this is the ideal test environment."
I want to be angry but honestly I'm just tired. I've been awake since yesterday and this is the most predictable headline I've read all year. You put several hundred of the most technically curious and caffeinated people on the planet into a metal tube for four hours with nothing to do and you're surprised the electric fence inside the cabin started sparking?
Delta says they're "investigating." Sure. Good luck with that. The suspects literally wore badge lanyards to the crime scene.
For the uninitiated: a deauth attack forces devices off a wireless network by flooding them with forged disconnection frames. It's not exotic. It's not clever. It's the Wi-Fi equivalent of someone repeatedly unplugging the coffee maker in the break room. Annoying, petty, and absolutely the kind of thing that gets a whole department's network privileges revoked.
The real kicker is that the legitimate cabin Wi-Fi is already barely functional. I've had better connectivity from a tin can and string. So whoever launched this attack was essentially weaponizing a network that was already on life support. Respect for the commitment, I guess. Zero respect for the judgment.
The Shepherds at Delta are now presumably in a very long meeting about "Wi-Fi security posture" that will result in a strongly worded PDF nobody reads.
Meanwhile the actual flock of regular passengers just wanted to watch a movie and were probably told the Wi-Fi was "experiencing issues." As always.
Remediation
Look, I shouldn't even have to type this.
If you're a passenger: Use a sheep tunnel. A VPN. On every network you don't own, which is all of them. Especially in airports, hotels, and pressurized aluminum tubes full of people who literally do this for fun.
If you're Delta: 802.11w. Management frame protection. It's been in the standard since 2009. I don't know what else to tell you. Apply the ointment.
If you're the person who did this: You were at DEF CON. You know better. Go to bed.
Some of us are trying to.
Baaaarely holding it together out here, same as always.
Original Report: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/delta-probes-wi-fi-deauth-attack-on-flight-carrying-def-con-attendees/