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from the changed-name-back-to-'bomb' dept.
An American flight was delayed due to a passenger changing the SSID of a device to "Samsung Galaxy Note 7_1097":
Lucas Wojciechowski was on Virgin America flight 358 from San Francisco to Boston and told BBC News he photographed the hotspot after noticing it when he opened his laptop. A call went out for any passenger with a Note 7 to press their call button. Mr. Wojciechowski subsequently tweeted the crew's announcements from the late night flight after the pilot warned passengers they would have to make an emergency landing.
"This isn't a joke. We're going to turn on the lights (it's 11pm) and search everyone's bag until we find it. "This is the captain speaking. Apparently the plane is going to have to get diverted and searched if nobody fesses up soon." The owner came forward confessing there was no Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on board, but they had changed the name of their SSID wireless device to 'Samsung Galaxy Note 7_1097.'
The real world is funnier than any joke.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:30PM
Do phones make up a name based on their model or something? The last few digits look like a BSSID/Mac address, why did no one even check that for accuracy? Do people really not understand how to idenfity what they might be about to connect to?
No one checked the mac address of the BSSID to determine if the vendor code matched a valid samsung note 7, regardless of what the name is. If this is a real problem -- then the MAC addresses of banned devices based on a vendor code wildcard mask should be on a blacklist on all planes with logging. Anyone faking it would get blocked as well; it would take real effort to do a stunt like this with a different mac address, but would save numerous freak out moments like this if the bar was raised sufficiently high to thwart such pranks.
They shouldn't be relying on accidentally noticing a hotspot that can be named anything. This is probably a joke the prankster had on the ground and didnt realize it'd cause a scene when someone ignorant saw it. He may even have forgotten until the scare machine went into full gear.
If people do not know what a fire looks like, then they shouldn't be reporting fire. This was a theatre that has a sign with the word Fire printed on it. The guy that put the sign up did not shout fire. The guy that took the screen shot of the word "fire" and claimed there was a fire without any proof -- HE is the one that shouted fire. And don't give him a pass for not knowing what fire looks like. If he doesn't know, he shouldn't be shouting it; he should draw attention to the sign, but not cause a panic. There are so many ways to get a hold of technical support options; the pilots could have called in to ask how to find it; asked for an IT person to help like when asking for a doctor when a medical issue arises... instead they defaulted to fear. Maybe my logic has no place in this argument.
That said--don't phones come with connectivity troubleshooters anymore? The blackberry OSes 6.x and 7.x have a site survey program as part of the settings screens that lets one save in a .csv file all the SSIDs around me, with the mac addresses and signal strength and all of that seen around the phone -- you can check the mac address and use that to look up whatever vendor, and if multiple SSIDs are assigned to it... are these details now hidden from everyone in the latest OSes?
I'll go get off my lawn now.