Software engineer Robert Heaton posted the entire story behind his open-source PySkyWiFi project— or how he achieved free Wi-Fi on an airplane by painstakingly subverting the existing firewall.

The process started when he realized that his Airmiles account page, not blocked by the firewall, was still connected to the broader Internet, and this gap could be exploited.

After a lot of funny hacking, he got it working to the tune of “several bytes per second.” Yeah – BYTES per second.

So right now it’s probably still best to just pay for the wifi, take a nap, or read a book.

Links:

• PySkyWiFi github link
• https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/software-engineer-achieved-free-plane-wi-fi-at-a-terrible-cost
• https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/