WillTravel

The article mentions at the end that you would be committing fraud and theft if you did this. Just as you could potentially steal someone's credit card or identity or otherwise commit fraud to get a ticket, you might be able to manage this method too, but you are still criminally liable if you do.

So big deal that you have a slightly different fraudulent option, with a somewhat less than 100% chance of working.

davie355

Well, someone must be the victim of credit card or ID theft. No one is necessarily the victim of a fake boarding pass.

jona970318

Well, wouldn't the airline be? These days we tend to think that just because they are big companies, their loses won't matter

DC777Fan

As opposed to big banks like Chase, Amex, BofA, etc who are the biggest victims of credit card fraud... Both pretty large and faceless.

I think the perception of less harm being inflicted is because you can only occupy an otherwise unsold seat--else the rightful owner would also have a boarding pass for the seat and they'd check the manifest and kick you back to Y, if not off the plane entirely for attempting to defraud them.

This doesn't make the behavior right by any means [and I'd never do it], but if you'd never pay for a business class seat (so no loss in revenue), the seat is otherwise unoccupied, and you just made somebody's day in Y with an empty neighbor, what is the airline out? One extra J class meal--which was apparently catered, anyway--and a little champagne? I agree, they are, but that certainly doesn't rise to the level of harm caused by credit card/identify thieves IMO.

Sabrina20

i think there are still a lot of gaps and bugs and the booking systems don't work perfectly. so a lot of stories don't even get published

weero

I think that a lot more 'stories' get published than actual exploits exist which are remotely workable.

As it is extremely easy to claim that there are "dark figures in the thousands" or "China has entire teams that work on exploits" or "the cartels spend millions.." without providing any shred of links or credible data.

And if you claim a grey area to exist, it is still considered a "worthwhile report" by many despite the absence of any evidence.

davie355

The slides are online (thanks angatol for the link - spoiler alert, sort of.)

cmn.jcs

Thanks for the link. Something I've been trying to find out lately is if US airlines have implemented signatures for boarding passes--mobile or otherwise. If so, then the approach outlined here shouldn't work. If not, then it would definitely get you past security with no problem.

Tsun

Guys, help me understand this - he has a way to forge a ticket. OK, this can be done easily enough, even without the Passbook. But how he would like to go through verification at the gate where, I assume, PNRs from boarding passes are matched to the airine database?

reft

+1. How is the TSA going to react to this at the checkpoint? If the stated claims are valid, this may not get you on the aircraft, but could get someone not flying through to the sterile side. If they get through with nothing harmful, who cares, but TSA isn't thinking that way these days. If the claims don't pan out, there could still be a bad reaction to the possibility of this.

Acceptance of mobile boarding passes could be suspended until they have terminals that query back to the airline database in real time or an offline means of validating the pass at the checkpoint. If they reject mobile passes, those wanting to fake it will have to start using fake paper boarding passes again instead of the high-tech forgeries.

planemechanic

He couldn't.

relangford

How about the elite missing an upgrade?