Blog Insights: Airline Insecurity

What bloggers are saying about the latest in information technology

A noisy flap took place last month when Indiana University student Christopher Soghoian created and made available a computer program that allows people to print bogus airline boarding passes. Cnet correctly reported in a recent piece that this episode brought a security flaw to the public's attention. According to the report however, Federal agents quickly shut the site down and seized the student's computers. The program he created was in fact based on a potential flaw that was not new at all, and the security flaw had already been made public. But the reason Soghoian was targeted by the Feds was that he was the first to actually create a program that could be used to exploit that flaw. Security expert Bruce Schneier has written about this vulnerability in the past as well. His blog, Schneier on Security tells a bit of the history of this flaw, which existed and was known long before Soghoian ever considered it.



Airport security is a mish-mash of procedures and protocols, some that work and some that don't. Schneier makes an interesting point that the photo ID requirement does very little for security --the reason for implementing it was purely financial, since it prevented individuals from reselling their tickets.



I've always wondered why people hack computers. Mostly, they do it for illicit financial gain, but some have other axes to grind, points to make, and a certain level of self-righteousness that gives way to a sort of virtual vigilantism. They say, "I don't like what this organization represents, so I'm going to hack their site. In Soghoian's case, perhaps he wanted to make a point about flaws in airline security, and went about it by exploiting those flaws publicly and providing a vehicle for others to do so as well. This system can be broken, so I'm going to break it. Simple.

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