Airlines system vulnerable to hackers at BIAL

With the Bangalore International Airport leaving the wi-fi hotspots unsecured at the airport, a hacker can break into the servers containing your databases and tamper with sensitive information pertaining to flight schedules and passenger details.
Not only that. The e-mail ID of a passeger surfing the net while waiting for his flight can be hacked to send a terror
mail, and he could end up under the scanner of security agencies while the real culprit remains undetected.
Shockingly, the wi-fi access points in a sensitive area like BIA are still vulnerable to hacking, even after the danger facing open and weak wi-fi networks was exposed by Bangalore Mirror three months ago (‘Wi-fi Way to Terror’, Sept 2).
To gauge the threat level facing wi-fi networks that service the international airport, Bangalore Mirror decided to check out the loopholes with the help of the team from www.indiacyberarmy.in (ICA). During the process of ‘war driving’, we found that nearly 90 per cent of all wi-fi networks are based on WEP (wired equivalent privacy) encryption and can be easily hacked into.
“This time, our entire operation lasted 15 minutes and the results were appalling. All we did was to check their security level, and all of them were quite weak, which means anyone with a reasonable knowledge of computers and the internet can easily penetrate the network.
“Just as importantly, almost all the wireless routers (internet access points) belonging to almost all airlines operating through BIA were open,” the moderator of the ICA team said. However, he chose not to elaborate on the weak networks due to security concerns.
23/12/09 Debi Prasad Sarangi/Bangalore Mirror

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Categories: Airports Dec 2009, Safety Dec 2009