Hacker uses boarding pass to reveal Tony Abbott’s personal details
Qantas has thanked an Aussie hacker for exposing a potential privacy breach after they managed to find Tony Abbott’s passport number and contact details.
Yes, former prime minister Tony Abbott.
According to a blog post from the hacker in question, Alex Hope, his friend sent him a photo Abbott posted to Instagram of a Qantas boarding pass asking, “Can you hack this man?”
After a bit of sleuthing, Hope was able to use the booking reference number and Abbott’s name to access the booking via Qantas’ website.
Once he accessed the booking he said he had a peek at the page’s HTML code and was able to access the former PM’s passport number, staff comments and his phone number.
“Reporting the exposed passport number to the government was easy, in a relative sense,” Hope told Gizmodo.
“But yeah, Qantas was having big #struggles then, they still are, so it was hard to find the right person to talk to.”
A Qantas spokesperson told Travel Weekly that it fixed the problem several months ago.
“We appreciate ‘Alex’ bringing this to our attention in such a responsible way so we could fix the issue, which we did several months ago,” the spokesperson said.
“Our standard advice to customers is not to post pictures of the boarding pass, or to at least obscure the key personal information if they do, because of the detail it contains.”
Featured image source: iStock/s-c-s
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
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just another example of what an Idiot Abbot is – the average traveller knows better than posting a pic of their boarding pass online anywhere!!