A Chinese teen has tricked hundreds of passengers to pay extra fees.
IF YOU ever get a text from an airline saying your plane ticket has been cancelled and that you need to fork out more cash to rebook it — then you might want to delete it.
A Chinese teen has made more than one million yuan ($A240,000) from hacking into an airline’s website and charging ticketholders a fake rebooking fee.
The 19-year-old man allegedly gained access to information on more than 1.6 million ticket orders.
Police say the suspected hacker exploited a vulnerability in the unidentified airline’s reservation system to glean passengers’ booking and contact information.
The alleged con man then contacted flyers by text message and told them that the “plane was out of order”.
The teenager then offered to help rebook the travel, while pocketing non-existent change fees for himself. Hundreds of passengers fell victim to the scam and were tricked into paying third party fees to unnecessarily rebook flights that had not been cancelled in the first place.
“The suspect coded the hacking software himself,” a police source told theSouth China Morning Post.
Waiting, waiting and waiting at the airport.Source:AP
Investigators say the cyber incursion exploited a rather obvious security flaw in the airline’s computer network.
The accused hacker was able to keep the illicit venture going for just under a month, managing to con passengers from July 31 to August 20 of this year.
The affected airline kept the data breach secret until Chinese media began reporting on hundreds of passengers who were conned in the scam.
The suspected hacker from Heilongjiang was identified only by his surname, Zhang.
He was tracked down and arrested last month in the city of Dalian in northwestern China.
This story was originally published on Flyertalk.com.
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