TSA Secure Flight Process Doesn’t Keep You Safe

by zombiehunter | 7:32 am, August 14, 2009 | Comments Off

This weekend, airlines will begin asking for your birth date and gender when you purchase tickets. Then, they will pass your info to the Department of Homeland Security for use in checking your name and info against their No-Fly Lists. This is how they want you to believe it’s going to work:

Looks pretty good, right? The Government is keeping you safe… but only from stupid terrorists (bad guys). How’s that, you ask? Consider how a smart bad guy, who’s on the Federal Government’s No-Fly List, could bypass the above “Secure Flight Process” and sneak onto a plane to do bad things. And no, I’m not giving bad guys good ideas. The smart bad guys have most certainly already considered this vulnerability.

1) First, the bad guy would steal credit card info (and get a peak at the victim’s driver license for birthday and gender info while he did this). If he can’t steal a credit card, then that makes him a stupid bad guy and means he’s going to fail at his objective anyway.

2) Then, with stolen credit card, he purchases a ticket in the credit card owner’s name.

3) Next, he checks in online, enters the birthday and gender of the credit card owner (again, smart bad guys will have this info from the card info acquisition), he chooses no checked bags, and prints out the boarding pass.

4) With boarding pass now in hand, he scans that into his computer and with a simple graphics program alters the credit card owner’s name to read his name, and prints out a fraudulent copy of the boarding pass that now reads his correct name.

5) He heads to the airport and proceeds through the security checkpoint with his legal ID, fraudulent boarding pass, and carry-on luggage (with the original boarding pass safely stowed for later use) receiving nothing but a bored, “have a nice trip” from the Federal TSA Agent.

6) Once through security, he heads for a restroom stall where he’ll study the masterful scribble placed on the fraudulent boarding pass by the Federal TSA Agent back at the security checkpoint (it varies by airport, often marker or pen, but some airports actually use ink stamps – which would require some pre-shenanigan airport SOP recon and preparation by the smart bad guy) and replicates the scribble on the original boarding pass with the credit card owner’s name.

7) Last step is him tearing up and flushing the fraudulent boarding pass, placing his legal ID back into his wallet, and presenting the original boarding pass with fraudulent TSA scribble to the gate agent as he prances down the jet way with your Federal Government oblivious to this No-Fly List bad guy’s infiltration.

So if TSA’s Secure Flight Process doesn’t stop smart bad guys (you know, the real dangerous ones) from potentially doing bad things, then what exactly is that Agency’s purpose and why are our tax dollars wasted on them failing? I understand that in this day and age, the Federal Government rewards failure, but is TSA good for anything other than the amusement of Penn and Teller?

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