Boarding Pass Barcodes Can Reveal Personal Data, Future Flights

An anonymous reader writes: Security experts have warned that barcodes contained on airplane boarding passes could offer a detailed stream of information to malicious individuals, including data on travel habits and future flight plans. Brian Krebs explained yesterday that by using an easily available online barcode reader, attackers can retrieve a person's name, frequent flyer number, and record locator — information needed to access an individual's account and details of past and upcoming flights, phone numbers, and billing information, along with options to change seats and cancel flights.

Comments

Re:Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

You might just need to read past the first sentence of TFA to get an answer to your question. For me, this was a big deal.

“I then proceeded to Lufthansa’s website and using his last name (which was encoded in the barcode) and the record locator was able to get access to his entire account. Not only could I see this one flight, but I could see ANY future flights that were booked to his frequent flyer number from the Star Alliance.”

From the article you didn't read

[wiredog]

When United does include this code in correspondence, all but the last three characters are replaced with asterisks. The same is true with Unitedâ(TM)s boarding passes. However, the full Mileage Plus number is available if you take the time to decode the barcode on a boarding pass.