Aircraft bomb finds may spell end for in-flight Wi-Fi
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
"There are many ways of coordinating an attack without using a mobile phone," says Aurélie Branchereau-Giles of OnAir, a company based in Geneva, Switzerland, that Airbus is backing as a maker of in-flight cellphone and Wi-Fi systems. "The position of our security experts is that the use of mobile phones on planes does not constitute any additional security threat."
I tend to agree. A timer is as effective, though perhaps slightly less precise, than a phone call. Even as it stands, one could probably set up an ad-hoc network with the explosives (laptop in luggage? Not sure about signal strength.) and use pretty much any electronic device to connect to it.
Am I missing something?
The bigger hole in this argument is the fact that a remote trigger isn't even necessary, a simple timer, or altimeter, or GPS, could be used as a trigger. If a remote trigger is desired for remote hijacking purposes, cell or WiFi would be convenient, but sat phones would work too...
But someone with a very long yagi antenna could probably transmit a signal to an overhead airplane. Due to the way airplanes travel only in corridors it wouldn't be too hard to set someone up on the ground.
The objections make no sense whatsoever. If a Tango has a Wifi enabled bomb set up, then it's not going to matter if the Cabin SSID is broadcasting. They'll just use a peered connection.
(US) NATO phonetic alphabet for the letter "T" and for "Target" (or enemy). Example: "We have two Tango's at 3 o'clock - I'll take the right one."