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posted by martyb on Monday May 29 2017, @07:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the going-to-need-a-narrower-laptop dept.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," [U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John] Kelly said the United States planned to "raise the bar" on airline security, including tightening screening of carry-on items.

"That's the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it's a U.S. carrier, particularly if it's full of U.S. people."

In March, the government imposed restrictions on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins on flights from 10 airports, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey.

Kelly said the move would be part of a broader airline security effort to combat what he called "a real sophisticated threat." He said no decision had been made as to the timing of any ban.

"We are still following the intelligence," he said, "and are in the process of defining this, but we're going to raise the bar generally speaking for aviation much higher than it is now."

Airlines are concerned that a broad ban on laptops may erode customer demand. But none wants an incident aboard one of its airplanes.

Reuters

Fox News has a transcript of the interview (archived copy).

Previous stories:
President Trump Revealed Classified Information to Russia; and Tweets it to the World [Updated]
"Sources" Fear Terrorists will get Past Airport Security with Laptop Bombs
US Bans Tablets and Laptops on Flights From Eight Muslim-Majority Countries


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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday May 29 2017, @10:12PM (3 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday May 29 2017, @10:12PM (#517339)
    Screw the explosives. Just figure out how to push some really obnoxious zero-day malware onto the USB stick and let the TSA propogate it onto every laptop they subsequently scan with it; "WannaCry TSA edition", perhaps? Now imagine how many different networks, and in how many different countries, those laptops are going to get connected to once their owners arrive at their destinations then head back home again, or the media and legal circus when it eventually becomes clear what the infection vector was...

    Never mind the criminals out to make a few BTC or whatever; any number of hacker groups would probably try to pull it off just the lulz.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @10:39PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @10:39PM (#517350)

    I would like to award you some internet points, but they don't "run" anything on their laptop, they just image it and then inspect the image.
    ... but I was thinking along the same lines as you

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:15AM (1 child)

      by zocalo (302) on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:15AM (#517387)
      I was thinking more along the lines of OP's proposal to run some form of auditing code on the hardware which *would* require the laptop in question running some code, rather than full-on on drive imaging which is kind of out of the question if it's required on every laptop passing through security. Nice for the NSA's data collection, perhaps, but rather impractical in terms of more invasive security to allow people to have larger electronic devices as carry-on again. Either way though, they are likely going to need to connect their device to a powered on laptop via USB, and that puts them at the mercy of techniques like BadUSB [wired.com]; it might not be as simple as copying an executable over to a USB stick and getting it executed on subsequent connections, but it does provide a possible means of launching a counter-attack.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
      • (Score: 2) by archfeld on Tuesday May 30 2017, @04:12AM

        by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Tuesday May 30 2017, @04:12AM (#517454) Journal

        Make the USB stick non writable ? Load the diag. program to touch each device in just the slightest manner and actually verify it exists and functions as it should. But I think one of the earlier responses was true. I opened up my brothers' 'new' very thin laptop, and they are correct, as thin and packed as it is there is still probably enough room to make a bomb big enough to depressurize a commercial plane.

        --
        For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge