A security research and student claims to have developed a method that can enable him to board a flight across Europe generating fake boarding passes designed for Apple's Passbook app.
Method has been developed by Andrew Hariton, an 18 year- old computer science undergrad from the University of Crete in Greece. He told that he will explain the proof of concept at the upcoming "Hack in the Box conference" on May 29 event in Amsterdam.
Hariton (@DaKnObCS ) revealed a bypass he claims to affect the ticket scanners used before passengers step onto the jetway to board a plane. Anyone with knowledge of the bypass can board a plane from a European Union airport to a destination of their choice by creating a fake boarding pass within Apple' s Passbook app, he said.
He said the model used in all EU airports to check the validity of tickets was " malfunctioning" noting they lacked " direct access to the airliner database", but wouldn 't be drawn on whether he tested his research by boarding a flight.
Hariton said he developed a 'simple ' technique to produce the boarding passes using CSS and Java within a web browser. The tickets could be passed to the Apple Passbook using an application programming interface built to allow software developers to pass tickets and coupons to the app.
