I’ve heard that soon Wi-Fi will be available in plane flights and I’d like to know, is it safe enough? First of all I’m worried about its influence on navigation and other important equipment, and the second problem is that I don’t know who I’m flying with, maybe someone will be able to hack my smartphone, laptop or tablet or even intercept my traffic?
An overworked army intelligence officer was tracking the frequencies, and an overworked Marine Electrical Engineer compared them to 14 electronic scrambler varieties used by coalition forces. As new frequencies appeared, the updated MOASS was analyzed by the National Security Agency, Maryland electronic warfare specialists, and New Jersey Army specialists, which led to recommended adjustments. These modified “load packages” were then e-mailed to US military forces across Iraq so that GPS jammers could be reprogrammed. The tedious process took weeks, during which new frequencies were recorded in the spreadsheet, requiring further analysis and reprogramming even as hundreds of new jammers arrive in Iraq each month. “It was a mess,” said a senior defense official.
Satellite imagery taken by commercial satellite company DigitalGlobe shows an alleged jammer system with its antenna extended on Mischief Reef in the South China Sea, Reuters quoted the Wall Street Journal as saying.
As you know, you can’t easily limit the propagation of the radio waves, so the signals you exchange with a Wi-Fi hotspot can be intercepted. There are literary millions of special apps even for smartphones. That can be done on the ground too, but here we have a limited space, so the hacker can sit comfortably behind you, and use all the advantages of modern smartphones vulnerabilities.
So, if you store some private, or in any way sensitive data at your smartphone or tablet – it would be wiser to avoid using free Wi-Fi networks. It is really easy to hack a Wi-Fi connection, you may even check how that can be done with an iPhone. So to keep your information where it is – turn of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules of your tablet or cell phone during the flight, or use a disguised Wi-Fi/Bluetooth signal blocker, it won;t forget to turn of those modules instead of you!