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U.S. Could Expand Tablet and Laptop Ban to All International Flights

danny_w said:
If there is a real risk here then I can understand and support a ban, but it will have a serious impact on business travel. Many private individuals will be hesitant to put their personal laptop into checked baggage but doing so for business is far more serious. Most tech companies that I have worked for would flat out refuse to do this for data security reasons; no company would want their classified information to leave the employee's possession. These companies will need to find another way to get classified information to the destination. Personally it is not that big of a deal to me but my employer would never allow it; fortunately I have no need to travel for business.
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If the client has proper encryption, it's safe.
 
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bingeciren said:
Turkish Airlines have a great way to deal with this paranoid ban: They allow you to carry and use your "banned" computing devices all the way to the door of the plane. Meaning, you can use them while waiting to board and do not have to put them into your checked baggage. You surrender your device (preferably in a bag or carrying case) at the door just like a wheel chair or a baby stroller. If you fly business, they give you a complementary laptop to use in flight. The internet service is also free to all passengers business or economy. You can use this complementary computer to access web based email, cloud based files, surf the web and save your work on cloud or your own USB stick.

Once the flight is over, you hand back your loaner laptop (like the headsets) and they deliver your computing device as soon as you exit the plane, before the passport or customs control. This is particularly useful if you have a connecting flight and you will not be seeing your luggage until you reach your final destination and will be spending more time between flights.
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Yes perfect. Let me somehow put my company's code base on an official Turkish laptop that is a great solution. Oh wait let me just download my sensitive presentation about an acquisition were targeting to an official Turkish laptop. Oh and there's no way that they're going to grab my laptop and install anything I wouldn't want them to. Nope no way.

Once you lose physical security to a device you have lost all security to it. Not a good solution at all.
 
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smallcoffee said:
Yes perfect. Let me somehow put my company's code base on an official Turkish laptop that is a great solution. Oh wait let me just download my sensitive presentation about an acquisition were targeting to an official Turkish laptop. Oh and there's no way that they're going to grab my laptop and install anything I wouldn't want them to. Nope no way.

Once you lose physical security to a device you have lost all security to it. Not a good solution at all.
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Well, I suggest then you don't use the WiFi in any airline or the airport hotspots. Your company's sensitive information could be stolen and your keystrokes could be captured and your naked pictures could be all over the internet on top of it.
 
bingeciren said:
Well, I suggest then you don't use the WiFi in any airline or the airport hotspots. Your company's sensitive information could be stolen and your keystrokes could be captured and your naked pictures could be all over the internet on top of it.
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Well, yes. I will not use public Wi-Fi when I can use cellular or refrain from using the internet.
 
cube said:
Well, yes. I will not use public Wi-Fi when I can use cellular or refrain from using the internet.
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I have no problem using public WiFi. If I have sensitive communication, I switch on the VPN and as far as my laptop is concerned, it is hardware password protected and the disk is encrypted using FireVault. So, it will take a dedicated effort to break into it even if they have physical access to it and frankly, when we surrender our laptops at the gate and collect it again at the gate, I see hardly any chance of an agent onboard trying to break into the surrendered laptops to extract dubious information from them.

If they are so dedicated and resourceful to accomplish all that in the cargo bay during the flight, then I can take my hat off and congratulate them, whoever they are.

All I know is that, this service allows one to use their computer until the last minute, while waiting to board the plane and avoids putting them into the checked luggage.
 
bingeciren said:
I have no problem using public WiFi. If I have sensitive communication, I switch on the VPN and as far as my laptop is concerned, it is hardware password protected and the disk is encrypted using FireVault. So, it will take a dedicated effort to break into it even if they have physical access to it and frankly, when we surrender our laptops at the gate and collect it again at the gate, I see hardly any chance of an agent onboard trying to break into the surrendered laptops to extract dubious information from them.

If they are so dedicated and resourceful to accomplish all that in the cargo bay during the flight, then I can take my hat off and congratulate them, whoever they are.

All I know is that, this service allows one to use their computer until the last minute, while waiting to board the plane and avoids putting them into the checked luggage.
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But what if it's not corporate VPN and you don't know who to trust?

Also, planting malware on the laptop on the way to/from the belly would be pretty quick.
 
cube said:
But what if it's not corporate VPN and you don't know who to trust?

Also, planting malware on the laptop on the way to/from the belly would be pretty quick.
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On a hardware password protected computer and encrypted storage? How? There must be wizard hackers having access to powerful computers on board.

Yes I know all passwords and all encryption can be cracked given enough time and effort but in practical life, on a flight that takes 10 hours to cross the Atlantic, It would not be feasible or practical to even attempt to do so.

Besides, if one is so protective about the sensitive data, it would make perfect sense to put the data on an encrypted USB stick, keep it in posession and keep it separate from the computer.
 
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bingeciren said:
On a hardware password protected computer and encrypted storage? How? There must be wizard hackers having access to powerful computers on board.

Yes I know all passwords and all encryption can be cracked given enough time and effort but in practical life, on a flight that takes 10 hours to cross the Atlantic, It would not be feasible or practical to even attempt to do so.

Besides, if one is so protective about the sensitive data, it would make perfect sense to put the data on an encrypted USB stick, keep it in posession and keep it separate from the computer.
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Without tampering with the hardware, I was thinking about installing firmware malware. Whether it would be possible sometimes to bypass the hardware password for this, I don't know.

If the computer is infected, it could become a paperweight, some firmware malware apparently cannot be removed. That means you should travel just with your phone and stick.

What airlines need to do is provide uninfectable video input ports for their IFE.

And phones need full fledged operating systems.
 
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cube said:
It would be a mess to launch an immediate ban if it doesn't give time to airports to assign a separate terminal area for the US.

I guess some will prefer to stop direct flights to USA. Nice way to to force withdrawal of Open Skies.

Anyway, the EU-US agreement is biased in favor of the USA. Unequal terms should have never been accepted.

Maybe there's a clause in it to allow an airport to suspend such flights as there's no security infrastructure in place to support them.

In any case, the US dictating how other countries travel between them would be unacceptable.
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And as pointed out by Bruce Schneier, that just means they check their laptop on the international flight, and when they get to the US they take the laptop out for the domestic connection once they leave customs and re-check their bag. The only credible ban is no laptops in the cabin on any flight, assuming they can't invent some method of detonating the bomb in the luggage compartment, but once you find yourself down that rabbit hole you think, maybe we can accept some risk.
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bingeciren said:
On a hardware password protected computer and encrypted storage? How? There must be wizard hackers having access to powerful computers on board.

Yes I know all passwords and all encryption can be cracked given enough time and effort but in practical life, on a flight that takes 10 hours to cross the Atlantic, It would not be feasible or practical to even attempt to do so.

Besides, if one is so protective about the sensitive data, it would make perfect sense to put the data on an encrypted USB stick, keep it in posession and keep it separate from the computer.
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Not happening. If it was it would have leaked.
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TechGeek76 said:
If the client has proper encryption, it's safe.
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Safe from the TSA anyway. :)
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elie.fares said:
There was also "rumors" about the ban expanding to flights coming in from Europe and that didn't happen as well. However, at the rate we're going, the U.S. is quickly becoming the land of the fear and the home of the paranoid.
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If they applied this ban to Trump's plane we wouldn't be having this discussion. Clearly, these people need to eat their own dog-food.
 
decafjava said:
What if a lithium battery catches fire in the luggage hold? Ban laptops altogether? Why not just ban commercial flight except for Air Force One and the other official flights?
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That's the logical, absurd conclusion. UPS and FedEx already banned Li-ion bulk shipments because they've lost a couple of planes to fire.
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cube said:
N to the T.
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The NSA wouldn't bother hacking the encryption, they'd use a zero-day vulnerability they're hoarding to bypass it.
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itsamacthing said:
They (TSA, FAA, etc) are trying to keep us safe, I support them all the way. It's unfortunate for our current challenges that our airports were designed during a more simple time of meeting friends at the gate and arriving just before your flights. Our airports needs to be redesigned and then people won't think so lowly of the TSA.
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They're trying to make you 'feel' safe. The key is to balance risk and restrictions and they're slowly defining risk closer and closer to zero. The risk associated with air-travel was already incredibly low so adding restrictions is really not changing the risk. If they applied this same sort of 0 risk tolerance to automobiles they'd travel 15 mph and wouldn't start if you'd had any alcohol in the last 48 hours.
 
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bingeciren said:
Well, I suggest then you don't use the WiFi in any airline or the airport hotspots. Your company's sensitive information could be stolen and your keystrokes could be captured and your naked pictures could be all over the internet on top of it.
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Personal laptop/device maybe, but not going to happen to a corporate laptop. Not without a targeted, sophisticated attack.
 
TechGeek76 said:
If the client has proper encryption, it's safe.
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That still does not help you if the device has been damaged or stolen.

On top of that, airlines are removing seat back entertainmant devices in favour of on-board streaming to your device. It's working out pretty good. But now you can't have your device. No pronlem, I'm sure they'll rent you an iPad for $50.
 
AsherN said:
That still does not help you if the device has been damaged or stolen.

On top of that, airlines are removing seat back entertainmant devices in favour of on-board streaming to your device. It's working out pretty good. But now you can't have your device. No pronlem, I'm sure they'll rent you an iPad for $50.
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How does it not help if it's stolen? It protects the data on the drive. If it's damaged, that's a different story.
 
TechGeek76 said:
I have no idea what you're going on about, I'm done.
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You're arguing that you're OK with the devices in the hold if the data is encrypted. I'm saying that for a traveller, especially a business traveller, data encryption will not help you do your work if the device is stolen or damaged. And forcing valuable mobile devices in checked luggage is just an invitation to theft.
 
palmerc said:
That's the logical, absurd conclusion. UPS and FedEx already banned Li-ion bulk shipments because they've lost a couple of planes to fire.
[doublepost=1496161855][/doublepost]

The NSA wouldn't bother hacking the encryption, they'd use a zero-day vulnerability they're hoarding to bypass it.
[doublepost=1496162526][/doublepost]

They're trying to make you 'feel' safe. The key is to balance risk and restrictions and they're slowly defining risk closer and closer to zero. The risk associated with air-travel was already incredibly low so adding restrictions is really not changing the risk. If they applied this same sort of 0 risk tolerance to automobiles they'd travel 15 mph and wouldn't start if you'd had any alcohol in the last 48 hours.
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It's naive to think that their efforts haven't made a difference, and it's foolish to think that what they are doing is just to make us feel good. There is no question that there are wolves at the gate, and if we let our guard down they will strike. Lucky the A380s, 787 and 777 I frequent are surrounded by a lot of security.... - a frequent traveler
 
NT1440 said:
How traumatized are you that you seriously worry boarding a plane? The only thing that worries me in my 10+ years of flying is missing the damn flight due to one security lane being open.
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Just paranoid, I don't trust planes one bit/ or the people boarding them. I feel with my luck things will go wrong.
 
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