How Hackers Use Hidden Data on Airline Boarding Passes to Hack Flights
Millions of travelers pass through airports each day without understanding how powerful and insecure a boarding pass can be. Anyone can scan the boarding pass barcode with a mobile app, allowing access to frequent-flyer accounts and even a passenger's temporary airline account. In this guide, we will explore how hackers scan and decode the information contained in a boarding pass barcode and why. The average airline boarding pass contains a wealth of information that a hacker could potentially take advantage of in two primary ways. How they take advantage of it mostly depends on whether the target has a frequent-flyer account or not. Airlines have two types of accounts. One is temporary and is created when you buy a ticket that isn't affiliated with an airline miles program, such as when you use Google Flights or Expedia. The other type is a permanent account, which often comes in the form of a frequent-flyer program. You might think that just not having a frequent-flye