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A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

(ramsayleung.github.io)
134 points samray | 1 comments | 10 Oct 25 07:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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appreciatorBus ◴[10 Oct 25 12:52 UTC] No.45538436[source]▶
> Here we exploited a simple cognitive bias: not all services using port 53 are DNS query requests.

Eh, I don’t think this is a result of cognitive bias. I’m sure the people involved in creating whatever hardware or software is running the network know that you can run other stuff on ports. More likely the extra effort involved in inspecting packets was not deemed worth the risk, a decision either made by the manufacturer of the hardware/software, or someone on Air Canada‘s IT team.

replies(1): >>45538620 #
1. gwbas1c ◴[10 Oct 25 13:13 UTC] No.45538620[source]▶
To quote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45537828

> This is likely another layer of security that they didn't break through:

> To prevent chat apps from consuming lots of bandwidth typically your connection is severely bandwidth restricted until you pay. If they didn't then someone could simply stream movies from their chat apps.