Friday, October 27, 2006

Airport Security

Schneier on Security presents this post regarding a "boarding pass" generator. Some of the comments are quite entertaining...

I had previously realized just how silly the whole "boarding pass as authentication token" thing was the last time I was getting ready to fly home. You see, I used my SSH/proxy connection to log on over the hotel's wireless and then printed my boarding pass to a PDF file, which I then carried down to the hotel's business center on my spiffy SD/USB card and transferred onto actual paper. I realized that since I have a (rather dated) full copy of Acrobat, I could easily modify the contents of the PDF and create variations of the boarding pass. The security screeners don't have bar code readers, so the codified information doesn't even need to be correct (until you actually want to step onto an airplane).

Update 1: The man has yet again demonstrated that ignorance is the preferred state for all of us citizens. That's right, the student that posted the code had the "opportunity" to visit with the nice people from the FBI. Apparently, the agency can actually live up to their moniker and act Frequently Bungling and Inept.