Traveling through an airport is often an exercise in boredom. How many times can you circle the same Starbucks and H&M without dying a little inside? Access to airport lounges is often an answer to your boredom (and lack of free WiFi) that’s just out of reach for most travelers. Either you have to have flown a million miles or pay a cover fee every time you want access to a swanky lounge. That’s not the case if you’re Przemek Jaroszewski or if you know how to build an app that creates QR codes.
Jaroszewski lost his elite status and was barred from the lush airport lounges, so he did what any good hacker does and built a his own app to fix the problem. Jaroszewski’s app is a basic input app that creates a QR code which can then be scanned at the gate of the airport lounge he wishes to enter. You can see it in action in the video above showing Jaroszewski proving his app works.
The crucial detail to remember here is that even though all the information that Jaroszewski enters is false, the only reason he’s able to access the lounge is because there’s no human interaction or system in place to double check that he’s actually on the flight embedded in the QR code. Jaroszewski cannot use the same code to check into a flight or go through security lines for instance. That would require him to actually hack into the airline and add himself to a passenger list — possibly raising more than a few alarm bells. Still, it’s super disconcerting that it’s that easy to trick a gate into letting you pass with a phony QR code generated in the simplest of apps.
Jaroszewski is speaking at DEF CON, the infamous hacking conference, later this year to expose the design flaws. Hopefully that will bring us better boarding pass security in the future, while also ruining your chances at living in luxury while you travel.
(Via Wired)
