I understand the proof of concept is cool, but why do this? High speed Internet at 35k feet isn't worth $15 to you? You said yourself it was going to be a long flight. Why hussle them out of what is one beer on a plane?
It's basic capitalism; if this "vulnerability" wasn't built into their code, would you submit to a more expensive price on your laptop when you could just as easily get half off (for the same product) on your phone?
If there were no 'hack', and I went on that plane knowing full well that I was going to purchase internet access, I would buy the half-off solution and tether to my phone.
As a user, this is a valid set of decisions. Since they're implementing this in a stupid way, it's perfectly valid to exploit their method and pay for the cheaper item.
If you went to the supermarket and found an item at $10, but you had the option of doing 5 jumping jacks to lower the price to $5, what would you do? Is it immoral to do jumping jacks?
"Since they're implementing this in a stupid way, it's perfectly valid to exploit their method[...]"
Really?
If you went to buy something on Amazon, and found they had a "stupid" vulnerability you could exploit in order to get half off of your order—maybe some Javascript hack that made the part of their system that calculated the price you pay think you actually ordered a smaller version of the product—is that immoral?
Is leaving your house or car unlocked a sufficiently stupid vulnerability to become "perfectly valid to exploit"?
Your examples break federal law; I'm exploiting Amazon's proprietary codebase to lower my prices / someone is still breaking and entering into my home. Those aren't moral because federal laws are being broken.
If Amazon charged $20 for a book if I were to buy it on my laptop, but $10 for that same book if I buy it with my phone, why in the hell would I buy it on my laptop? How is that immoral? I'm presented with two options: $10 or $20 for the same item. The company has offered me a contract of payment and I am to choose one, or I can take my patronage elsewhere. This is not a matter of breaking into a server and SQLi'ing until you can make an item free; this is the company offering me something for cheaper, depending on how I buy it.
Aren't they hustling you for $10-16 for a few hours of internet access? There is no marginal cost difference between a phone and a tablet or laptop, and that marginal cost is likely VERY low relative to the asking price to begin with.
This is preying on the notion that you "should" have to pay more for a laptop vs a phone access because that's what people have been conditioned to accept from their wireless carrier.
