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Experts Warn About Security Flaws In Airline Boarding Passes
concealment writes in with a story about a newly found security issue with the bar codes on boarding passes. "Flight enthusiasts, however, recently discovered that the bar codes printed on all boarding passes — which travelers can obtain up to 24 hours before arriving at the airport — contain information on which security screening a passenger is set to receive.
Details about the vulnerability spread after John Butler, an aviation blogger, drew attention to it in a post late last week. Butler said he had discovered that information stored within the bar codes of boarding passes is unencrypted, and so can be read in advance by technically minded travelers.
Simply by using a smartphone or similar device to check the bar code, travelers could determine whether they would pass through full security screening, or the expedited process."
Or perhaps to do a good ol' "DROP TABLE flights;"?
We could retrain these guys and up their salaries at the same time to be Air Marshalls.
Seriously? These are people that couldn't qualify for a position as a security guard at the local mall and you want to arm them and put them on a pressurized airplane? No thank you.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
It is a department with the largest scope creep I have ever seen.
You mean aside from the CIA, NSA, IRS, DOD, FBI, the executive branch of the government, the entire government itself? It's pretty hard to quantify 'scope creep' when everybody is guilty.
You misunderstand. Sure, all those agencies have creeps at the scope; but the TSA has the biggest creeps.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!