In the age of ever-changing technology, it comes as little surprise to see a bar code on just about everything, including your airline tickets and boarding passes. But did you know those bar codes could be fake?
In a statement detailing its proposed Boarding Pass Scanning System (BPSS), the Transportation Security Administration says, “The vulnerabilities associated with fake boarding passes are well-known. In the fall of 2006 a doctoral student at Indiana University created a website that enabled individuals to create fake boarding passes.”
TSA says the instance illustrated “how a known terrorist who is on the Watch or No-Fly list could use a fake boarding pass to gain access to the sterile (beyond the security checkpoint) area of the airport.”
Now comes word TSA is looking at ways to encrypt those bar codes in an effort to render them tamper-proof.
TSA spokesman Jon Allen tells Cheapflights the agency is taking its first steps in a process that could lead to testing new paper boarding passes and scanners later this year.
“If there’s been any attempt to alter [the boarding pass], that would be something the scanner would help indicate,” he says.
In effect, what TSA wants to do is bring paper boarding passes up to the security standards of new paperless electronic passes, the kind displayed on hand-held devices.
Allen says TSA has piloted electronic boarding passes in “a number of different cities” across the country. Those electronic passes are already encrypted and already capable of being read by special scanner.
“This would be the same type of encryption on a paper boarding pass,” says Allen. It would work, “whether you pick one up at the [airport] kiosk or print one out at home.”
Right now, paper passes aren’t encrypted, which makes them more susceptible to forgery.
The Boarding Pass Scanning System would mark the further evolution of TSA’s plan to keep folks on the No-Fly list off airplanes. Recently, the agency took over the checking of IDs at the front of the line at security checkpoints.
“We have a couple of devices we use to ensure the authenticity of [IDs],” says Allen. “There’s a portable black light, where you can look for any security features embedded in a piece of identification (such as a passport), and there’s a magnifying loop.”
Security, like safety, is a multi-layered affair: if one level doesn’t catch the problem, there are backups capable of doing the job.
“We have several layers of security in place,” says Allen. “While no single layer may be impenetrable. You put all of those layers together and it makes it more difficult for someone who wants to defeat the system.”
These bar code tests could begin later this year. If that happens, the challenge will be adding that extra layer to security so as to defeat the bad guys and keep legitimate travelers on their way, unhassled and traveling with an added sense of security.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
