Arbor Networks: Security to the Core

So, I’m sitting in the Red Carpet Club in the San Francisco Airport, headed back home to Denver in a bit. Having independently discovered last week that Red Carpet Club members could now get Internet access for free via T-Mobile, I was eager to get online in an airport without having to drop another $9.95 to T-Mobile, or being held hostage to anything like Denver’s abysmal DIAFreeWIFI service.

However, if you’ve been in the SFO Red Carpet Club lately you’ve realized it feels a bit more like a refugee camp than a luxury escape for frequent travelers. Finding a place to sit is difficult enough, much less an available power outlet to recharge.. Anyway, for the $300/year membership fees, I long figured wireless Internet should be included – and it finally is, so kudos to United and the Red Carpet Club folks for that!

But it can’t possibly be that good, can it? Nope, ‘course not! I have two immediate observations worth sharing.

First, when walking in, I saw a lot more open laptops than usual. Trying to get online I realize the DHCP server for the wireless network had exhausted it’s available address pool, and so I can’t get an IP address for quite a while. I repeatedly query for one over and over, knowing odds are an allocation will be expiring soon enough, and I wanted to be the one to nab it. It turns out they’re using a single /25 for the wireless subnet here, and there were easily 126 people online. Anyways, I finally got an address assigned. I’m now not sure whether I’d trade determinism of for-pay T-Mobile Internet for the current lottery-based model, I’ll get back to you on that.

More interesting is perhaps the access model they employ. To login, all you need is the United Mileage Plus number of the primary Red Carpet Club account holder. Now, having long questioned the wisdom of a luggage tag that displays these numbers, be it a “hole-punched” Mileage Plus membership card, or a more obvious oval-shaped Red Carpet Club tag, I’m even more wary now. But if you’re in bind and need your airport wireless fix, odds are you won’t have to walk far to find one available for the taking. As a matter of fact, I see two from where I’m sitting right now.

I’ve yet to explore how difficult it would be to exhaustive search for valid numbers, or if multiple logins are permitted at a given time, or how far outside of the Red Carpet Club these numbers are valid, or… I also wonder how long it’ll be until some poor schmuck is arrested for allegedly downloading child porn from an airport wireless network…

Gotta jet, flight’s boarding…

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Arbor Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.