Doug Lhotka

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Doug Lhotka.
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Can someone bring (more) chaos to an airport for less than $50?

June 8, 2016 By Doug

Last month, according to this article, a Verizon wireless crash disabled wifi at JFK, causing huge backups as agents had to hand-write boarding passes and baggage tags.  It’s interesting for many reasons, but we’ve just learned about a vulnerability at that airport.

If the article is correct, it means that someone with a $50 wifi or cellular jammer might be able to take down operations at one of the biggest airports in the world, and (here’s a movie plot threat), a bad actor could plug it in in an out of the way place, so it could disrupt things for a long time before being discovered.

WiFi and cellular data connections are easy and convenient to implement, but for critical infrastructure like this, they have real risks.  I’d guess that the designers focused on availability in terms of hardware failures, and not malicious intent.

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