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

Umm

[DougOtto]

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

Or, you could just read that information from the boarding pass, no barcode reader required.

Re:Bad design?

[drinkypoo]

Your subject says it all ... bad design.

Is it actually bad design? It's fault-tolerant design. If there's a problem with their network, they can still retrieve the data from the boarding pass itself. Protect your boarding pass, and you won't have a problem. You were already planning to treat it as a secret, right?