A plane belonging to JetBlue Airways Corp. was evacuated on the tarmac at Newark Airport Saturday after someone airdropped an image of a suicide vest to other Apple Inc. device users on the plane.

AirDrop, introduced into both iOS and OS X (now macOS) in 2011, is a feature that enables the transfer of files among supported devices over either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. In this case, the connection was made over Bluetooth, meaning that the sender of the picture was unable to be ascertained.

The suicide vest image was also received by two flight attendants, who immediately informed the pilot. An emergency was then declared, the plane evacuated and bomb-sniffing dogs deployed. No bomb was found.

The feature is said to be very popular with teens but has raised a number of concerns given that it can be used for harassment. In June, a 16-year-old student received an unsolicited “dick pic” while on a school excursion in Melbourne, Australia, and in 2017 there was an outbreak of similar pictures being sent in New York City.

In response to the New York incidents, New York lawmakers introduced a bill last year that would make it illegal “for a person to send an unsolicited sexually explicit video or image to another person with intent to harass, annoy or alarm such other person,” the Guardian reported.

Discussing the security aspect, Richard Gold, head of security engineering at Digital Shadows Ltd., told SiliconANGLE that there wasn’t a way to trace a Bluetooth address to an individual unless all devices were confiscated and forensically examined.

“The root of the attribution issue is that MAC addresses are not assigned like IP addresses,” Gold explained. “This would be like attributing an issue to certain piece of equipment based on its serial number.”

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra AI Inc., noted that the real problem is that everyone leaves Bluetooth on by default and it’s designed for sharing information.

“The easiest way to not receive things over Bluetooth is to require a pin for connectivity or to just turn it off,” Morales added.

Photo: Eric Salard/Wikimedia Commons