Most reasonable people wouldn't pay $75 to rent a pair of beach chairs on a public beach.
03.08.2023 - 13:37 / forbes.com
It’s the classic pre-trip selfie. You snap a picture of yourself with your passport and boarding pass, then promptly share the photo on social media. Your family, friends and followers may like it.
But cyberhackers love it.
“The risk of being hacked increases drastically when you share too much information about your vacation online,” says Robinson Jardin, head of social media and digital for NordVPN, a cybersecurity software company. “When it comes to boarding passes, the real issue is barcodes. They can be read by pretty much anyone with free software online.”
The vast majority of airline boarding passes now contain barcodes or QR codes. “And on these barcodes, there’s a lot of information that hackers can use,” says Jardin. Along with personal identification and contact details, the code will typically contain your reservation number and frequent flier number. It may even include your passport or driver’s license number. This kind of data can be sold on the dark web and ultimately used to steal the victim’s identity, open credit card accounts or make unauthorized purchases.
For hackers, the very best targets are those who share their digital boarding passes. “It’s even easier to read if it’s a screenshot of the barcode itself,” says Jardin.
Even heads of state can make cybersecurity blunders. In 2020, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was hacked within an hour after posting an Instagram photo of his Qantas boarding pass. In that case, the hacker was benevolent and alerted Abbott of the potential security breach.
There’s also a subset of hackers who are simply mischief-makers, using information to play relatively harmless pranks, says Jardin. “The moment you have this barcode information, you have the person’s last name and reservation number. So you can go on the on the airline website and cancel the return flight or change the return flight.”
But most hackers have nefarious motives, particularly when it comes to frequent flier credentials. “If a hacker can access your mileage points, it can be quite lucrative because the points don’t necessarily have to be used for another flight,” Jardin says, noting that many websites let you trade mileage points for branded gift cards, essentially functioning as laundromats for point thieves. Once those points are removed from your airline frequent flier account and sold, they are virtually impossible to recover.
A common secondary type of attack is executed through social engineering. “The hacker will pretend to be from the airline and either email or call the flyer, perhaps asking for credit card details to confirm the return flight,” Jardin says. “Or the hacker might go in the other direction and call the airline pretending to be the traveler,
Most reasonable people wouldn't pay $75 to rent a pair of beach chairs on a public beach.
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