Security News > 2023 > August > “Snakes in airplane mode” – what if your phone says it’s offline but isn’t?
That's because "Fake airplane" mode doesn't itelf snoop on or try to steal private data belonging to other apps, but works simply by showing you what you hope to see, namely visual clues that imply that your device is offline even when it isn't.
You can imagine that determined scammers, cryptoconfidence tricksters and spyware peddlers might be keen to find a way to hide "Fake airplane" treachery in otherwise unexceptionable looking apps in order to make it through the App Store verification process.
At this point, a well-informed user would be inclined to accept not only that they had turned airplane mode on, but also that they had successfully cut the apps on their phone off from the internet.
In this way, the apparent switch to airplane mode was recorded in the iPhone logs, yet the actual system call to turn it off in real life was hijacked to turn off Wi-Fi but not the mobile network, leaving an unexpected pathway off the phone for any app authorised to use mobile data.
Thirdly, the researchers figured out how to intercept the "Mobile data is turned off" dialog, and simply to replace it with the more reassuring "Airplane mode is on" notification instead. The last possible giveaway facing the Jamf researchers was that with airplane mode artificially activated in the Control Center screen, the mobile data connection icon would nevertheless remain green.
If you ever need to use apps on your phone while being as certain as you can that it's cut off from the internet, remember that a simple connection test with your browser might not be telling you the truth.