alt Hacker NewsUnited Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
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> A Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.
That is just nutty. Are we now actively participating in the genocide?
Awhile ago I named my phone "you-have-been-hacked" and to my joy it made me look twice at my router a few months later haha
Perhaps the joke is irresponsible on my behalf potentially causing unnecessary stress for whomever is directly or indirectly scanning my device...
..but on the other hand, if this person can't see the joke, perhaps they shouldn't have access to scanning devices.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts?
Cheers
I wonder what would they do to Malaysian firemen travelling with work devices. :-)
Bomba means Firemen in Malay.
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/fire-engine-photos.com/43...
https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2025/10/10/3563...
Surely we could of just used some basic Bluetooth fingerprinting and reveal the MAC Address of the Bluetooth device, then realize its a speaker...
Why would a bluetooth speaker be needed during a flight? It feels a bit antisocial to turn some loud music in a cabin.
IM THE BOMB AND ABOUT TO BLOW UPPPPPPPP
Great.
Now troublemakers have new way to make travelling even more stressful.
This is like the Adam Sandler movie where he says bomb on an airplane. It's an overreaction, is it not? A terrorist is not going to call their bomb's bluetooth trigger bomb. Even if they are, are you telling me we have no idea whether there is a bomb in luggage or not?
Security theater at its finest
Even if you discount the possibility of an intentional threat as silly, this could have been a warning from someone under duress. Turning around was the right move.
That should be a perma ban. I get jokes, but there should be boundries.
AI slop article with 300+ upvotes, nice going guys.
Well. I just changed my bl labels on 3 phones and wifi ap settings to variations of this. Done a million miles on aa in 1.5 years before.
Great, so next time people will have an app to flood the Bluetooth with all sort of names if they ever decided to ruin the trip, and just delete the app later, undetected. Hell, you can even mod a small Bluetooth tracker and put it in someone’s bag while loading the stuff.. this opens so many attack vectors, ancient regulations don’t work with latest tech.
Does this story mean that anyone can disrupt flights by hiding on planes some minimal device with Bluetooth (say a pi zero), programmed to turn on only at random and after a few days?
I think this part of the article actually explains what freaked out the crew lmaoo: "During this incident, a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft."
Someone needs to explain to me how the name of a Bluetooth device has any bearing on anything. Isn’t the real security not letting a bomb on the plane?
Also, now anyone who wants to disrupt a flight can switch their WiFi or Bluetooth name to Bomb or “Free Palestine” and the flight gets disrupted? Get out of here.
In other news, Tom Jones got removed from a plane for singing the wrong lyrics.
> During this incident, a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Free Palestine, F Zionists" prompted the pilot to issue a warning to the cabin, telling the passenger responsible that they had "30 seconds" to remove the name or the FBI would meet the aircraft.
Wtf?
I can understand a bomb, but this is just free speech.
Blewtooth
Can you name your phone “not a bomb”?
... I can't believe what I am reading...
"Bluetooth speaker name had been set to a "four-letter word, [...] BOMB".
Luckily, it wasn't named "Nuclear Bomb from Cuba" because US Authorities would not have other choice than to nuke Cuba.
Seriously? What those people are doing when they see a fence with "ASS" painted on it? Do they believe that too?
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GOATed plane, love the engine power.
What a usability nightmare this site is: 3-4 popups before I could even read the title. No thank you. And this is with an adblocker turned on.
Don't these sites realize how many users they're losing?
This feels like one of those rare stories where everyone involved probably overreacted a little, but you can also understand why nobody wanted to be the person who ignored it.
These phones should have limits of how much you can use the tech...
Could've been me, but I'm glad it wasn't me. xD