Darknet Diaries - 84: Jet-setters

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

How bad is it if you post your boarding pass on Instagram? Our guest, “Alex” decides to figure this out for themself and has quite a story about what happened. You can read more from ��Alex” on their blog https://mango.pdf.zone.We also hear from TProphet who’s here to give us some travel hacks to save tons on airfare when we start traveling again. You can learn more about TProphet’s travel hacks at https://seat31b.com or https://award.cat.SponsorsSupport for this show comes from Blinkist. They offer thousands of condensed non-fiction books, so you can get through books in about 15 minutes. Check out Blinkist.com/DARKNET to start your 7 day free trial and get 25% off when you sign up.Support for this show comes from Tanium. With Tanium you can gain real-time security and operational data directly from your endpoints – along with the ability to take action on, and create reports from, that data – in just minutes, so that you and your teams can have the insight and capability necessary to accomplish the mission effectively. Learn more at https://federal.tanium.com.View all active sponsors.Sources https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minister-tony-abbotts-passport-number-on-instagram https://seat31b.com https://award.cat

I went to Europe once, all by myself. I had to save up for like a year to afford to go, but once I got there, I had no money to do anything. So I sometimes snuck into places. I won't say specifics, but I'll give you some ideas. I snuck into a castle once. Yeah, my trick was to find the gift shop and see if the tours like dumped out in the gift shop or something.

And sure enough, they did. So I went in through the exit. The castle was pretty cool. I was able to scramble up long twisting stairwells and get into higher floors and look at rooms and stuff. Eventually another tour came through and I just jumped in that and went back out. I had such little money on that trip. I remember once going to a hamburger stand and literally asking for half of a hamburger because I didn't have enough for all one.

And the guy was flabbergasted, but he was nice and gave me a hamburger with nothing extra on it, just plain, and told me I couldn't even use any ketchup. Another time I remember going on a train with no ticket and just hiding in the bathroom the whole trip. And when the train stopped at my station, I just ran off real quick. But I miss traveling. You ready to take some trips again? I think we're all itching to go on vacation when life returns to normal. But don't take off just yet. In this episode, I have two stories for you. The first one is about an airplane boarding pass. And the second

is some travel hacks that you're just not going to believe. These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I'm Jack Recider. This is Darknet Diaries. This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. I know a bit too much about how scam callers work. They'll use anything they can find about you online to try to get at your money. And our personal information is all over the place online.

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And then they got busy deleting things. It was great to have someone on my team when it comes to my privacy. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for Darknet Diaries listeners. Today, get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash darknetdiaries and use promo code darknet at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash darknetdiaries and enter code darknet at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com slash darknetdiaries and use code darknet. Support for this show comes from Black Hills Information Security.

This is a company that does penetration testing, incident response, and active monitoring to help keep businesses secure. I know a few people who work over there and I can vouch they do very good work. If you want to improve the security of your organization, give them a call. I'm sure they can help. But the founder of the company, John Strand, is a teacher.

And he's made it a mission to make Black Hills Information Security world-class in security training. You can learn things like penetration testing, securing the cloud, breaching the cloud, digital forensics, and so much more. But get this, the whole thing is pay what you can. Black Hills believes that great intro security classes do not need to be expensive. And they are trying to break down barriers to get more people into the security field. And if you decide to pay over $195, you get six months access to the MetaCTF Cyber Range, which is great for practicing your skills and showing them off to potential employers.

Head on over to BlackHillsInfosec.com to learn more about what services they offer and find links to their webcasts to get some world-class training. That's BlackHillsIninfosec.com. Blackhillsinfosec.com. For this story, I'm talking with a person whose hacker name is Alex. Do you want to hear the story of why they call me Alex with the quotes? Yeah, you always use it in double quotes there. Yeah, it's in double quotes. And like, why is it in double quotes?

Who does that? And the answer is because when I wrote this blog post a few years ago, Vice magazine, they wrote an article about my blog post where they like referred to it. And they said, oh, according to a blog post written by a hacker who goes by the name Alex, in double quotes. And that's my real name. That's not my hacker name. I just had my real name on the blog. They just said, oh, that's this hacker called Alex. And so that's my hacker handle now, I guess. Okay, so their name is just Alex. And Alex lives in Australia. And by trade, Alex works on the red team.

My job is to hack the place that I work exactly like a real attacker would, as realistically as possible. But then instead of selling all the data on the dark web, we show them how we did it instead. So metaphorically, my job is to commit crimes and then write very, very detailed confession letters. Yes, but you're not bringing me a red team story today. You're bringing me a different story. Nope, we're just talking about a fun thing I today. You're bringing me a different story. Nope. We're just talking about a fun thing I love to do on the weekends, I guess. Alex has a blog.

It's called mingo.pdf.zone, where they document different things they've hacked. Like once, Alex got permission from a friend to hack into her stuff. And so Alex went about doing that just to see if they could. And it's an amazing story, which I learned a lot from. And normally, Alex gets permission from the person before trying to hack them. But one day, Alex got a tip. A tip that asked if they could hack someone way outside of Alex's friend group. So, how did this all start?

It all started one Sunday afternoon when I was sitting at home at my desk, drinking from my water bottle in a way that did not possess any intent to subvert the Commonwealth of Australia, where I live. And suddenly, I got this message in the group chat. The message just said, at Alex, can you hack this man? And it was a link to an Instagram post by former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. Well, that's quite the audacious challenge, isn't it? To hack the former head of state of the country where Alex lives in? But this was not for some political agenda or even to get even with former PM Tony Abbott.

No, it was much smaller than that. Tony Abbott is on Instagram and he just posted something that was very interesting to Alex. Like months before this, I was talking to these people about boarding passes and saying like, yeah, people post their boarding pass online all the time. Like they just posted on Instagram saying, going on holiday, check it out. But they don't realize that their boarding pass can be used for bad identity fraud somehow. So some hacker is just browsing hashtag boarding pass on Instagram being like, yum yum. And that's exactly what Tony Abbott just posted on Instagram. A picture of his boarding pass.

I don't know why. I guess he was just showing off for the gram that he's traveling around or something. But it doesn't matter. What does matter is Alex was telling people that this is a bad thing to do. But can Alex prove why this is bad? The post was a picture of his boarding pass for a flight.

And he's like taking a photo of the boarding pass. It's kind of like in his lap. He's sitting in the plane. And it's just a photo of the boarding pass. He's just showing that in his lap. He's sitting in the plane and it's just a photo of the boarding pass. He's just showing that, hey, I'm on a plane. And the caption is something like, I'm coming back to Australia. Hello or something. OK, so the first thing that comes to mind for me is that if you post your boarding pass,

people immediately know you're not home and might take that opportunity to break into your home and rob you. So that's one thing. And that's a big thing. But is anything really bad about showing the world what flight and seat you're So that's one thing, and that's a big thing. But is anything really bad about showing the world what flight and seat you're going to be on? I mean, it's not like he's posting his credit card or even passport, which has details that he doesn't want people seeing. So Alex was curious exactly what information is contained on a boarding pass.

When you get a boarding pass from an airline, or when I have at least, they don't really tell you that it's secret, right? When you type the booking reference into a website, it doesn't come up as dots. It's like a password. You can just type it in, and you can see it as you're typing. And that's sort of what people have learned means, oh, okay, that means it's not secret. But actually, it is secret. So I think the sort of messaging from the airlines is a bit confusing as to whether your boarding pass slash booking reference is meant to be secret or not. So that was the situation when Alex received this text asking if Alex can hack the former PM. Alex knew that this boarding pass contains sensitive information,

but did they really know how to get that or what someone could do with that? So Alex took on the challenge of hacking the former PM, Tony Abbott's boarding pass to try to figure it out for themselves. I was curious. I kind of just wondered like, oh, this famous person has done this thing that could be like bad or dangerous. Is it dangerous? How bad is it? What has happened? And I didn't know. I didn't even know anything about what you're meant to do with a boarding pass. But I wanted to find out. So Alex, who has training and experience as a red teamer and security incident responder, began to figure out what they could do with this photo.

What's the tool you use to get started hacking this boarding pass? Oh, I tried to use the most elite hacker tool I know. So I opened up Google Chrome and just started typing in the bar at the top that Googles things. Yeah, it's true. Google has probably helped more hackers than any other tool in history. I knew there was something bad about posting your boarding pass, and I knew that something bad could happen if someone else had it, but I'd never done it before.

And I didn't know, like, where am I supposed to look? Which information is the secret important information? I don't know. After some Googling, Alex found out that their first target should be the barcode on the boarding pass. This barcode contains all the important information for a person's flight, including the booking reference number that Alex needed to gain access to Abbott's account. So I tried to scan the barcode just using like a barcode scanner app on my phone, but it didn't work. And I thought, oh, okay, maybe it's too blurry. So I tried like making the picture bigger, but then it still didn't scan.

Okay. So I went into Photoshop and tried to like, you know, turn up the contrast and make the little bars more obvious so the app could pick it up, but it still wasn't scanning the barcode. And I felt like a long time, like maybe 15 minutes looking at this image, trying to fix the barcode. And then after that time, I noticed that the booking reference is also just printed on the baggage receipt, just in text. You could just read it with your eyes. You don't need the barcode scanner app at all. And I was like, wow, I graduated university, but it did not prepare me for this moment. Okay. So the barcode wasn't even needed here. The airline just printed the booking reference number right on the ticket in plain text.

And once he realized that, Alex went to the airline's website to see what access this gets you. So I went to the Qantas website, that's the airline, and I went to the manage booking page where you like log in with your booking. And there's two things you need to manage a flight booking. The first one is the booking reference, which I just got. And the second one is your last name. And I knew the last name. It was Abbott.

It was also printed on the boarding pass. So taking these two pieces of information that Tony Abbott just posted to his Instagram account, Alex tries to log into the airline's website with these details. And I was kind of hoping that the second thing you need would be like a password or something more secret. But then I realized that the booking reference is the password. So I was like, OK. Yeah, it turns out that's all you need to log into the site with. So I typed in the booking reference and last name and just clicked log in.

I haven't done any hacking here. I've just read a six digit code and typed it in. And then when I hit login, it was like, hello, Mr. Abbott, welcome to your flight and stuff. Here's all your flight details. And I was like, oh. Alex was now logged

into Qantas Airlines website as the former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott without his permission. This felt illegal. But at the same time, they just entered in some basic information that Abbott himself posted publicly on Instagram. So I'm not even sure if this is classified as logging into a website.

Like Alex was saying, they don't obscure the booking reference when you're typing it in, so it doesn't feel like a password. And it's printed right there on your boarding pass. So yeah, airlines just don't seem to be treating this as sensitive information. Like airlines aren't telling you to keep this secret and to not share it with others. This isn't an area of their website where you can do much, especially after the flight has taken off. You can't buy tickets or make reservations here.

No, it's just there to check your flight status. So yeah, it's a gray area on whether this is a super private area of the website or if it's just security through obscurity kind of thing. But Alex was in there now and was looking around to see what was there. At first, it didn't look like there was anything important. The flight had already happened, so it wasn't like they could change the booking or anything. And Alex could see that the flight was booked through a travel agency. Then Alex found Tony Abbott's frequent flyer number. But what are you going to do with that? This is not really a piece of identifying information and doesn't do much.

So even though Alex logged in, there really wasn't anything on this website that would be a privacy problem or security concern. At this point, Alex was relieved to not have found anything. But what else could there be? I wasn't going to give up just because there was nothing that I could see on the web page. Like, I'm not going to stop just because a web page says we're done. Oh, yeah, that's right. Because you're a red team and you have access to the elite hacking tools such as Kali, and probably got an old backtrack hanging out somewhere. Jack, you can't say that to me. Alex wanted to analyze the website further and look for any hidden data that might be obscured somewhere. Maybe there's secret information buried somewhere on the website, and you need a super special hacker tool to see it.

So then I used the only hacker tool I know, which is to right-click on a page and then click inspect or inspect element. And that opens up the page source of the page. It shows you the HTML of the page. And listen, somebody might one day try and tell you that this is hacking or this is advanced computer skill. It's definitely not. Anyone can do this. This is a tool that programmers use to try and understand skill. It's definitely not. Anyone can do this. This is a tool that like programmers used to try and understand websites. It's not made for hacking. This is not an advanced elite hacking tool. Anyone can do it.

I hope that's clear. So you're saying right click view source is not illegal. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm confident on that one. Yeah. So the way a website works is your browser asks the web server for the information on the site. And the web server sends the data over formatted in HTML. Now it's just a matter for the browser to format and display the website. But yeah, in order for the browser to know what to display, it must have that HTML.

And since the dawn of browsers, you were always able to right click on any website and then click view source and see the raw html it's not illegal to view source because every website you ever visited ever the browser is viewing the source for you but the reason why alex did this is because sometimes there's extra bits of information that might not be displayed in the browser but it is there in the html when i started looking at the page source, I was like, okay, yep, this is a web page. And so I kind of scrolled around because I didn't know what I was looking for.

I was just kind of wondering if there was more stuff in there. And then eventually after scrolling around, I noticed there was this sort of big section of JSON, this big section of like data just in the page, which is, I mean, sometimes that happens in web pages, but it's kind of strange for the page to have a whole bunch of extra data in there that it's not showing. JSON data is just another way to format data. It works particularly good for web browsers to parse it and read it. And Alex said this chunk of data was just a little

too big for them to look at and understand long lines of text and data and numbers. It's not encrypted. It's just hard to read. I realized that I wasn't going to find the passport number or anything like that by just rummaging around in the HTML ball pit. So eventually I just searched for passport in the page. And one of them was this thing called passport and it had a thing called date of birth and had a thing called document number. And the document number was this thing called passport. And it had a thing called date of birth. And it had a thing called document number. And the document number sure looked like a passport number. Then I sort of looked at the birthday. And it was the same birthday that Tony Abbott had when I looked him up on Wikipedia.

And I was like, oh no. It's just there. It's just in the page. At that point, I was fairly sure I was looking at the extremely secret government-issued ID of the former Prime Minister of Australia and, you know, former servant to Queen Elizabeth. And I was kind of worried that maybe I was doing something wrong somehow. But, like, not enough to stop looking. This, I would say, is a privacy problem. By posting your boarding pass, someone can use that information to log into the airline's website and click view source and see your birth date,

passport number, frequent flyer number, and flight details. With this information, a bad actor could do some nasty stuff. You don't want to be just telling the world what your passport number is. Somewhere in here, Alex dubbed this the do not get arrested challenge of 2020. Because this felt wrong. But where was the line? Alex wasn't sure. And so at this point, I mean, what's what's the what's the nerves feel like for you? At this point, I was like, huh, I think I have the former prime minister's passport number. And I was thinking, oh boy, oh geez. Because for all I know, other people are looking at this page at the same time as me. There's no guarantee that I'm the only one here. And so this is basically public, this passport number. And so I was thinking, okay, I've got to get someone somehow to reset his passport number. Like so I was thinking, okay, I've got to get someone somehow

to reset his passport number. Like you reset a password. Can you even reset a passport number? And then I was thinking, this all seems okay, but is it possible that I've done a crime? So after I found the passport number, I was wondering, well, is there anything else in this page or is it just the passport number? And so I wondered if there was a phone number so I searched for phone and number and things like that but nothing came up but then I in an extremely big brain move searched for 614 which is the first three digits of an Australian format phone number and that led me to this really weird section of text in the page there there was this there was a phone number there was like enough digits beginning with 614. But it didn't just say like phone number equals this. It had all this strange uppercase,

all caps, spaghetti airline code. Like the phone number said all caps CTCM space QF space HK1 space and then the phone number. And there was all this other weird uppercase stuff all over the place. It turned out that Alex had found a section of the code called SSR, for Special Service Requests. This is a special airline language that's code for things like whether or not this passenger wants a vegetarian meal, or the passenger is an unaccompanied minor. In Tony Abbott's SSR, Alex could see notes left by the

airline, and one of the notes started with the code CTCM. And when Alex looked up what CTCM meant, it was a note that contained the passenger's phone number. This is so if the airlines need to text you about delays or whatever. At this point, Alex thought they're now looking at Tony Abbott's phone number. And this was about the point where Alex knew he needed some help. After all, this was the Do Not Get Arrested Challenge of 2020. So Alex reached out to the Australian Free Government Legal Aid Hotline. But whoever answered the phone, they just didn't know enough about computers to be able to help Alex with this.

I didn't think that anything I had done sounded like a crime, but I understood that sometimes when the other person is famous or something, that things can suddenly become a crime. And so I was like, well, what if it's the former prime minister? Is it illegal to do this? I don't know. I don't know the laws. So I should probably try and find an adult who can tell me how the law works. When the free telephone lawyer told Alex they didn't know, Alex went looking for themselves to understand if they had committed any crimes. So I was kind of just Googling it, being like, hey, what are the laws? Can I read them? And it turns out there is. There's this thing called the legislation, and it's just the laws written down.

And I've had no problem scrolling through and reading all the HTML of that page, but whoever wrote the legislation was just making up words. There is just so many complicated words, and it's so not obvious what they mean. But I was eventually able to divine from the Times New Roman tea leaves that having the password number shouldn't be a crime, that seems fine. And I was worried about defamation, which is where you publish something that makes someone look bad. But I realized that in the laws, it says that it's not defamation if it's true. And so just publishing a true story, that's okay. But then the laws that I read that were about computers were like, it's illegal to do anything with a computer. If you ever log into a computer, that's a crime. And so I was like, oh, okay,

I should ask a lawyer about this. Okay, let's take a moment to gather ourselves here. Alex's whole goal in doing this was to show their friends that they should not be posting photos of their boarding pass on Instagram. And now Alex has this really cool story about how the former PM posted his boarding pass and how Alex was able to easily get all kinds of private information just from that. Alex wants to blog about this, or at least be able to show this to their friends. My end goal was to publish a blog post about all this and also fix the problem. So step one was to figure out whether I've done a crime. Step two was to notify somebody that this happened so they can fix it and notify someone that the

passport number got made public. Maybe Tony Abbott, maybe the government. Step three was to get permission to publish that blog post about it. And step four was to tell the airline, tell Qantas about the fact that all this information was just in the page so they can fix it. At this point in the story, Alex's interpretation of the law puts them on the safe side. But is Alex's interpretation actually good enough to stay out of jail? Interpreting the law is very tricky. So they continued calling lawyers and seeking help to get some answers, which was not so easy because they didn't want to admit anything. Alex just wanted to know, hypothetically, if somebody did

do this, would it be illegal? And eventually Alex heard enough people say it's probably safe, and Alex was feeling confident enough. But I want to emphasize something here. Alex's motives mattered on whether or not this was illegal. This was done for research and to do responsible disclosure. So even though this was legal for Alex to do, it probably wouldn't be legal for a criminal to do the same thing, but with the intention of doing some kind of malicious activity. Step two was to notify Tony Abbott that his personal information might have

been seen by other people. And that should be easy enough. I mean, his personal number was just one of the things Alex found in the HTML. Plus, he obviously was on Instagram since he posts photos there. So Alex could just call Tony Abbott's cell phone directly to report this or send him a DM on Insta. But what are you going to say? Uh, hi uh hi mr abbott i uh hacked your boarding pass that's the other thing is that like i wanted to be really careful about the way i reported it or communicated it not because it's there's sometimes there's this yikes thing that happens i'm sure you've seen where someone's trying to be responsible and like report a security problem and like help the person fix it but the people misunderstand and i think that you're trying to hack them or ransom them

or something and they get really mad. And I didn't want to play that game. Okay, so no, Alex didn't want to just DM Tony Abbott about his passport. But Abbott left office in 2015. So now Alex had a new challenge. Who in the government do you call to leave a message for the former Prime Minister?

Alex reached out to some friends to see if they had any advice. At first there was nothing, but see if they had any advice. At first, there was nothing, but then one friend had an idea. One of my hacker friends told me to call 1300-CYBER-1. 1-300-CYBER-1. And I was like, excuse me? That's not real. You can't be serious. You can't say that. But apparently that's theian phone number to call cyber or something i'm not really sure but you know i called that number call cyber you know i instantly dialed 1-300-cyber1 and uh the person on the other end was like hello and i was like incredible it's real and i just i vaguely explained what was going on and and they said, oh yeah, no worries. Here's this email address where you can report this to ASD.

ASD is the Australian Signals Directorate, and it's like the Australian equivalent of NSA. Admitting all this to the Australian version of the NSA seemed a bit intense. But apparently in Australia, that's who you go to for stuff like this. So I wrote them an email, just like the person said. And I said, you know, hello, I found the former prime minister's passport number. Here's the last digit and stuff to prove that I found it. Let me know if I can help. Let me know if this is useful for you.

And they replied instantly, which is great because no one else has been replying instantly. They replied right away. And it was interesting because the email subject said security level sensitive, which is some kind of security rating the ASD assigned to the email, which was pretty interesting to Alex. So I knew that I'd made it to the big time. In their reply, the ASD asked for more information from Alex. And once Alex gave it to them, Alex says they basically told him, all right, thanks for the help, kid. We'll take it from here. So that seemed like it was the right thing to do. And at least security would be addressing something with the former prime minister. Like maybe someone was calling him

right now saying, take those images down from Instagram. But next, Alex wanted to let Qantas know about this vulnerability on their website. I wanted to tell them, hey, inside the page source of the managed booking page is you send the passenger their own passport number and their own phone number and their own whatever else is in that weird uppercase spaghetti. Alex found an email for the security team at Qantas and told them about this vulnerability. And just like with ASD, Qantas sent them an email that basically said, thanks, we're on it. And then radio silence. So that's two official bodies alerted and both times they said they would take it from there so technically alex had done all they needed to do but now alex wanted to get some kind of permission to be able to post this story on alex's blog so you wanted permission to post this and specifically you wanted permission to post like hey this is tony abbott's not just like here's what you can do with a boarding pass yeah I wanted to tell the whole story exactly as it happened to me

without leaving out anything important and why is this because I like this I like it when people blog and stuff so why is it important to you to to publish this story I'm lots of reasons but like firstly I love writing dumb blog posts where I do stupid jokes and also try and say something meaningful. Love to do that. But I wanted to show all the details and how simple it was because I wanted everyone to feel like, oh, I could do that. And the idea is, yeah, you absolutely could do this. I didn't do anything special. Anyone could have done this. And I wanted to show that, oh, well, if it's that easy for it to happen to somebody famous, then it could happen to anyone. Alex seems like a good person. They wanted to get that stamp of approval, or at least let Tony Abbott

know that his name was going to be attached to the story. But the only problem was... I didn't really know who I needed to get it from. I was like, from the government? From Tony Abbott's security team? Or I don't know. Did Tony Abbott himself? I didn't know. Right. So how did you go about trying to figure it out I spent a long time not finding anyone to talk to I spent a long time not knowing how to contact his staff or who to contact and a lot of time waiting for the government to reply to emails that they never would reply to and never did but then one day in a burst of motivation or something I told a journalist friend about this and asked them if they knew what I should do next.

And they had really, really good ideas because they're a professional journalist. And so they said I should try and find his former staff from when he was the prime minister, so his former ministers and stuff, and contact their offices and see if they have his contact details. The logic here is that Alex didn't want to call Tony Abbott directly.

They wanted the office of Tony Abbott to let his people know about this. Because surely a former PM has people, right? And Alex thought that the current administration might have connections to the former administration's people. Alex went to Wikipedia and searched through Tony Abbott's staff when he was in office. Minister of the Arts? No, he's retired. Minister of Agriculture? Nope, he's retired too. Eventually, Alex noticed one name that did sound familiar. One of his former ministers was Scott Morrison, who is the current Prime Minister of Australia today. I was like, oh, well, he definitely has an office. Calling the current Prime Minister's office, looking for the old prime minister.

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan to me. And I was like, hello? I was trying to explain that, hi, like, I know that this is, I know this is not Tony Abbott's office, but I was wondering if you had his contact details, because I have this media inquiry, which is what my journalist friend said to say. And the person I was talking to interrupts and explained, so Tony Abbott isn't the prime minister anymore. This is actually Scott Morrison's office. And I was like, oh yeah, I know. Ooh, I just, please, can you check if you have the contact details? And she said that she wouldn't

have them and went to check for like a long time, like maybe 15, 30 seconds. And then after that time she was like, oh, actually I can give you Tony Abbott's personal assistant's mobile number. Is that good? And I was like, yes, that is extremely good. That's what I've been looking for this whole time. Yes, thanks. Alex jots down the number, hangs up, and dials that number. Then I called it right away, and the person who answered, I was like, hello, is this Tony Abbott's personal assistant?

And the person was like, oh, no, actually, that's not me. But I am one of Tony Abbott's staff. And I was like, amazing, incredible. This is what I've been trying to find for a month. I started explaining the thing that I'd rehearsed on the phone so many times, explaining the security issue, and I wanted to report it. And that way through, the person says, sorry, who are you? And what organization are you calling from? And I was like, oh, no, no, I'm just Alex. I'm just a person. I'm not calling from anywhere. I just found this thing.

They were understanding, and they were like, I'll have Alex. I'm just a person. I'm not calling from anywhere. I just found this thing. They were understanding. And they were like, I'll have to call you back. It sounds straightforward. But getting this far actually took a long time, like at least a month of trying to figure out someone close to Tony Abbott to explain the impact of posting his boarding pass on Instagram like that. So this felt like major progress. An hour later, I get a call from another number that I don't recognize.

And it's a beautiful moment for me because he says that he knows what I'm talking about. He's like, yes, I've seen the emails from AST. I'm currently in the process of getting Tony Emmett a new passport number. And it's like amazing. It's so good for me to talk to someone who knows what I'm talking about. Wow. Success. After all this time, Alex finally got confirmation that all those emails weren't just going into the void. And I didn't even know you could get a new passport number, but apparently that is a thing. And thanks to Alex, Tony Abbott was getting a new one. Alex said this phone conversation went on for a while, discussing things like how they found all this information on Tony Abbott and what kind of stuff Alex wants to put in a blog post.

The assistant asked to see a draft of the blog before alex posted it so they can review it and then he says these things do interest him he's quite keen to talk to you and i was like excuse me tony abbott wants to call me on the phone what i suppose i owe this service to my country at this point what does he want to talk about and he said oh he's just to pick your brain on these things he's quite keen to learn about it or something and i was like all right let's absolutely go so so you set up a date for the call and then what does tony abbott call you or you call him no yeah then my. Then my phone rings at 3.30 as we planned. And so a private number. Nice.

And on the other end is Tony Abbott. He started telling me about how, like, mostly the thing that he wanted was to check that his understanding of how that I'd found his password number worked. Like, check his understanding was correct. And it was. And he also wanted to ask how to learn about VIT, which is what he called it. How long did you guys talk?

How long did we talk? About half an hour, an hour? At least half an hour. Whoa. I mean, we had a lot to, I don't know, he had lots of questions, like how did it all happen, and what can I do to learn about it? And he was telling me about how he tried to log into a Microsoft Teams meeting

earlier, and he got fairly bamboozled by that whole process of trying to do it. And he said that he can now log into a Teams meeting in a way that he couldn't before. Then suddenly, he said, you could drop me in the bush, and I'd feel perfectly confident navigating my way out, looking at the sun and the direction of rivers and figuring out where to go. But this, ha. And that was some incredibly powerful Australian energy. That's like the most Australian thing anyone's ever said about anyone could ever say, you know,

saying, oh, being dropped into the bush, no worries. That's easy. I can just navigate my way out. That's normal. But learning how to use a computer, hmm, that's hard. Like, who does that? Alex talked Tony Abbott through the entire process of how they ended up with his passport number. Then Alex started answering some tech questions that Tony had.

Then at one point, he asked if there was a book that he could read to learn about the basics of IT, since he wanted to learn how it works. And I was like, oh, I mean, there probably is a book out there called The Basics of IT or IT for Dummies or something, but it probably won't help because I didn't learn from a book. Everyone just figures it out. And so I told him this story about my mum, which was that when I was growing up, my mum always said that there were too many buttons

and that she was afraid to press the buttons because she didn't know what they did. And I would always say, no, no, no, mum, you just got to press all the buttons and then you know what they did. And I would always say, no, no, no, mom, you just got to press all the buttons and then you know what they do. And I don't know if that helped him. Did you actually tell him about your mom? Yeah. Is that okay? No, I think it's brilliant.

That chat that Alex had with Tony Abbott about his mom. Yeah, that resonates with me. My parents, heck, even my grandparents have been using computers way longer than I have. Yet for some strange reason, I'm better at computers than they are. Way better. What is with that? Well, for one, when I got a computer, I felt compelled to push buttons. They were afraid to push buttons, which always reminds me of this quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Buttons aren't toys.

Buttons aren't toys. Buttons aren't toys. Yes, they are. To me, buttons are toys. I want to push them all to see what they do. Something inside me just can't help it. And it's this innate curiosity of mine that has absolutely led me into a lot of trouble with computers. I've ruined them, deleted important stuff, and whoopsed the whole thing many times. But then, you know what? I had to rebuild and restore it and fix it. And so for me, the way I learned how to be good at IT was simply being fearless at pushing buttons. Yes, sometimes I had really bad moments, like that time in 05 when I somehow wiped 20 gigs of music from my iPod. Man, I'll never forget that. That was the worst data loss experience ever for me. But it's moments like that that really teach you how to respect the tech.

So that's my suggestion at getting good at IT too. Push the buttons and push them a lot. Well, so after Alex's call with Tony Abbott, Alex got approval to publish the blog post. And so it was published. The post was a hit too, echoing across many tech publications as a lesson to be learned on why you don't post pictures of your boarding pass to social media. But it also meant that the Do Not Get Arrested challenge of 2020 was a success. We've got one more story for you after the break. Sponsored by SpyCloud. With major breaches and cyber attacks making the news daily, taking action on your company's exposure is more important than ever. I recently visited spycloud.com to check my darknet exposure and was surprised by just how much stolen identity data criminals have at their disposal. From credentials to cookies to PII.

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Stay with us. All right, so I have another flight hacking story for you. This one is from T-it. T Profit. Now T Profit is no stranger to the hacking scene. I asked him how many DEF CONs has he been to? And he told me, yeah, all of them. So the first DEF CON was in 1993 and it's been a yearly event since. So going to all of them is quite an accomplishment. Now there's over 30,000 people who attend DEF CON, but that first one, like only 100 people showed up,

and T-Prophet was one of them. It was at the Sands, and we had like maybe 50 people in one small room. And yeah, that's kind of how it started, and it just grew from there. So you can imagine someone who's been in the hacker scene for over 30 years must have a lot of stories, right? Yeah, well, T-Prophet isn't sharing any of those stories with us today. I wish, but maybe another time. But T Profit likes to write. No, I'm not talking about the 120,000 tweets he's written at this point. He's a regular contributor to the 2600 magazine, the Hacker Quarterly. But he also likes writing a travel blog called Seat31B.com.

And this travel blog is unlike any travel blog I've ever seen. In my free time, I like to travel. My goal is to join the Traveler's Century Club, which means that you visited at least 100 countries or territories around the world. I've been to all seven continents so far. Even Antarctica. Yeah, including Antarctica. I went with a bunch of hackers, actually. The Tour Camp people and TourCon did a cruise to Antarctica a few years ago called World Tour. And so we went down like it was like hackers took over a ship.

We had a 3D printer. It was awesome. It was like a former Norwegian icebreaker with mostly Russian crew, which was pretty fun. So his blog is basically a bunch of travel hacks. Now, you might think, oh, travel hacks. Yeah, I've seen stuff like that on BuzzFeed. Like when traveling, wrap your shoes up in a shower cap so that you don't get your clean clothes dirty.

Or here's a real advanced one. Enable private browsing when booking your flight, because sometimes websites will jack up the price next time you visit their site, knowing that you've made up your mind and you're ready to buy. But T Profits blog goes way beyond these amateur level tips. I look at things from the hacker perspective, and that includes getting there. Because, you know, one thing about travel is it can be pretty expensive, right? But I don't like to pay money for things if I don't have to pay money for doing things. I'm kind of an extreme couponer.

I'm that guy that's like, you know, going through the self-checkout with like every single stacked coupon you can possibly do to get a pizza for three cents. You know, that's me. I buy stuff I don't even want to eat because I can get it cheap or free. And I kind of do almost the same with plane tickets. Now, my tricks to get cheap flights is to first do a comparison of all the flights to find the cheapest one. And my second trick is to always book at least 30 days in advance, which can save hundreds of dollars. Those are decent rules to try to follow, but they're not, you know, you're actually paying cash for a flight if you do that. Like money is leaving your bank account. I don't like paying money for flights.

Ooh, Bitcoin. No, no, Bitcoin's money. You can turn it into money. No, I like paying points for flights. Because if you can get points for free, and you pay for your flights with points, then you didn't actually spend any or, you know, maybe not much money on your flight. Uh-huh. See, T-Profit has figured out a way to get free flights to almost anywhere in the world by using points to buy tickets.

And this is so much different than a travel hack, which might save you like $20 or something. And so yeah, people who travel a lot get frequent flyer miles, which are the same as airline points. And this is a way for airlines to give thanks to their loyal customers. You can exchange frequent flyer miles or points for free trips to places. Now, historically, airlines gave these to loyal customers, people who flew a lot. But in the last few decades, airlines have been looking for new ways to find customers and can sometimes offer these points as a sort of marketing strategy. Generally speaking, what I do is I use my good credit

to take the banks to the cleaners. They are falling all over themselves to give me credit cards, and that's totally fine. I'll sign up for all of them. I get the points that go with the cards. But if you can bank a bunch of points that the bank essentially gave you for very little or free, a points bank can turn into tickets that are worth way more than you would ever pay for the points, especially if you can get them free through credit cards. And using this basic strategy, T-Profit has gone to some pretty exotic places. I can actually talk about a trip that I took to St. Helena.

Where's this? St. Helena is a British territory in the South Atlantic. It's the final resting place of Napoleon. South Atlantic? I still don't even picture this. So this is off of Africa? Yeah, well, you know where Walvis Bay is, right? No.

Namibia. No. Not Nambia, as the president says, Namibia. Namibia, that's Africa. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Africa. So go to Walvis Bay and head due west for around four and a half hours on a plane equipped with special extra tanks to make it that far and then land at the windiest airport in the world.

Okay. So if I were to fly from the U.S. to, what's this place called again? St. Helena. St. Helena. Wonderful place to visit, by the way. I totally recommend it. How much would that cost in airfare for a typical person? That depends.

Do you want to sit all the way in the back in the middle seat with somebody reclining into you and a baby throwing up in your lap? Or do you want a personal live flat suite with champagne and caviar brought to you where you're weighted on hand and foot the whole way? What did you choose? Of course, the latter. See, that's the other thing about T-Prophet. He's not just trying to squeeze his way onto the cheapest seat of the plane just to get somewhere for free.

No, he upgrades the experience to sit in the special seats at the front of the plane, like the ones that recline all the way down into a flat bed. Okay, so to get from, say, Seattle to St. Helena on a lie-flat business class ticket would be how much? Business class? You would be paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 for that

if it's business class. But I didn't go business because that's so gauche. I went first class for part of it, where they bring you the Krug champagne. Okay. I didn't know there was a difference between business and first. Oh, yeah, yeah. So first class is, I mean, just to give you an idea of first class, on this particular trip, the first class lounge in Hong Kong, I'm pretty sure Elon Musk was in there. So the reason why there's first class is because who you're flying with are people like Hong Kong movie stars and celebrities, you know, billionaire hedge fund managers.

They're paying more money so they don't have to be around you. That's really what this is. You know, it's not all that much better than business class. You get a lie flat seat in both cabins. You get pretty nice food in both cabins. You get some really ridiculous, expensive, luxury stuff in first class. You know, they bring you a box of chocolates before you leave. That's, you know, that's pretty nice. And you get access to lounges that are not for you. In fact, there's so much not for you that when I started walking to the first class lounge in Hong Kong, I got swarmed by easily like eight Cathay Pacific staff who came out of nowhere.

It was just like, bam, there's all these people there. And they're like, sir, can we see your ticket? And when they looked at it, they're like, oh, right this way. So I don't exactly look like a fancy billionaire hedge fund manager, right? I mean, Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie sometimes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the thing. There's like now a metal model that they assume you're some kind of Silicon Valley entrepreneur or something. So I just try to give off that vibe now. Yeah. Where did you fly out of to get there?

So I started in Seattle, flew to San Francisco, and then did first class San Francisco on that trip. And then I did first class from there to Hong Kong. And then business from Hong Kong to Johannesburg because that's the only cabin that Cathay operates to there. But that would have been around an $11,000 flight if I'd paid for it, just for that part. Right. So roughly $11,000 plane ticket is what a normal person would have to pay for that. Yes. What did you pay for it? $70,000 Alaska Airlines mileage plan points and around $22 in taxes. And I got all those points for free. Free? That means the only out-of-pocket cost he had to pay for his flight there and back was $22 in airport fees? And he's traveling on the luxury seats?

These kind of seats are not typically offered to people like you and me. You've got to know that this even exists and then it's crazy expensive. Yet he got these tickets for free. That's just incredible. But how do you get 70,000 Alaskan mileage points for free? So the typical way most people get points with Alaska Airlines is by flying Alaska Airlines, but there's tons of other ways that you can get points. These frequent flyer programs partner with banks and Alaska Airlines partners with the Bank of America. And the thing with their partnerships is they give you a big bonus to sign up for their credit card.

Right now, you can get 40,000 Alaska Airlines bonus miles in addition to, I think, $100 statement credit just for a card sign up and meeting their minimum spent, which is, I think, $2,000 just for a card sign up and meeting their minimum spent, which is, I think, $2,000. That's $2,000 a year? No, it's just one time. Okay. So, you know, put everything that you're going to buy on a card for like any given month on that card. Yeah. And you'll get one mile per dollar that you spend on the card. And then in addition to that, they'll give you the sign up bonus. Okay. So that's $40,000? Well, you get $40,000 for that card. And then in addition to that, they'll give you the signup bonus. Okay. So that's 40,000. Well, you get 40,000 for that card, but then the Bank of America has a business card too.

And I own a rental property, so I'm clearly a business owner. So I can sign up for the business card because if I was ever going to buy anything for the rental property, I could do it on that. And that's another 30,000 points that you get for that card. Just signing up or? Signing up and meeting the minimum spend, which is generally minimal. So I had some, you know, I had genuinely own a rental property. I had some expenses that needed to be paid, you know, relative to improvements for that property. So I put all of that on the second card on the business card and between the personal card and the business card. And it wasn't exactly this, but very, very close.

I ended up with 70,000 points. So what did I do? I used my good credit and a little extreme couponing to get all the way to Johannesburg, you know, essentially for free. It was maybe $22 in taxes. Ah, very clever. I love the way hackers think. They're always trying to figure out new ways to exploit the system. One time in college, we had to buy textbooks for our classes, right? And it was like $100 per book. And one of the other guys in my class came to school with a book

which said property of the school library on it. And I asked him, can you actually just borrow a book all semester? And he's like, no, but the late fees for borrowing it only add up to $50. So it's cheaper to just borrow it and then pay the fee at the end versus buying it. And if you're that kind of person who thinks like this, I got news for you. You have the mentality of how a hacker thinks. But that's Johannesburg, South Africa, and you don't want to hang out there. It's like, it's not a very safe city. So I wanted to go onward from there to St. Helena. And the way that I did that wasn't

in a first class cabin. So you can be strategic about how you mix this up. The way to fly to St. Helena, there's one airline that goes and it's called the Airlink. And they're a partner of, but not owned by South African Airlines. And there's literally no way to book that thing with regular points. Like the only airline that they partner with where you can use their points is South African. And getting South African Voyager points just means that you have to fly South African Airlines a lot. They don't have a lot of ways to get those points that are easy. But Chase allows you to spend ultimate rewards points through their Expedia portal. And you can buy cash flights with that. So this flight's around

almost $1,000 from Johannesburg to St. Helena and back. But I was able to redeem chase points at 1.5 cents per point for that flight. So I went Johannesburg to St. Helena and then St. Helena back to Cape Town since I wanted to return from Cape Town. And with his flight book, he set off on his trip. Yeah, these were long flights. So he did take advantage of those lie-flat seats and fell asleep.

Oh, yeah, like a baby. I mean, it's super nice. I mean, they have turndown service. So, you know, they give you pajamas. They're free. And then when you go to, you know, you finish your dinner, they bring out a five-course meal. And there's a menu. So they come out, like, just kind of like waiters.

And they're like, well, sir, these are the options that we have today. And just pick anything that you'd like. And then they just kind of bring you a multi-course meal on linen tablecloth with the whole very intricate China service, with all the different sizes of forks and stuff, you know, it's super fancy. But if you're a billionaire, you expect this, right? I mean, they're just, they're giving you

the level of service that hedge fund billionaire managers and celebrities get. Like, that's what they bring for you. It's just, they'd really rather people like me not know this is a thing, because you know, I was definitely polluting their rarefied atmosphere. OK, so this sounds too easy to sign up for two different credit cards, spend money on them and you're flying first class with this kind of service. It just sounds too easy. I'm surprised that American, uh, Alaska airlines hasn't realized that how simple it is and said, well, you can

only pay for half your flight with this or something. No, no, no. It's not easy at all, man. Cause you have to find availability and then you have to know how to book this. Alaska doesn't put Cathay Pacific flights on their website. They'll never show up. If you, if you do a search. You have to call somebody who books them in a different system. And then they don't have a really good way to search with Alaska Airlines. So you have to use the websites of other airlines, like the one that I use the most for finding Cathay flights is Qantas.

So you look for a flight that you could book with Qantas points. And those flights are usually available to also book with Alaska points. There's some rules. It's like there's usually one fewer seat than you see available with Qantas that's have to call. And then when you get somebody who's like, you know, dusts off their manual and, you know, realizes how to book this thing, then you can get it. But I mean, Cathay doesn't want to give these away. They only do it to maintain credibility in their program. And they especially don't want to give these seats away to partners. So there will be like one day you can go in a given month. And you've got to book almost a year in advance to be able to get this.

So yeah, it's not easy. Why is it only one day you can go? Well, they only release a handful of seats. And so you have to find those, jump on them, and book it really early as soon as it's available. And they release seats to their own Asia Miles members before they release to partners. Okay, so this is becoming more complicated And they release seats to their own Asia Miles members before they release to partners. Okay.

So this is becoming more complicated just because it's one of those, this isn't for you kind of service or airfare. It's not for you. No, it's not for you. It's for you if you work really, really hard and really want to be there. But yeah, no, it's not like you can just go get some credit cards. The points guy makes it seem really easy to do that because they make most of their money with commission links for credit card signups. So they're totally right on the earn side that earning points is relatively easy

by signing up for cards. And you do need to be strategic how you do it. And you definitely don't ever want to play this game if you're the kind of person that gets into debt. So, you know, you will pay way more in interest to the bank than you ever would save in flights. So if you haven't paid off all your credit cards, if you have any debt at all, like this game is not for you. I have a mortgage, but like, you know, that's it. But if you're the kind of person that can pay off your card every month, then you can be really strategic about what you sign up for. And you can stay on top of these cards and their annual fees

and cancel them before the new fees come due. Then you can really rack up a lot of points. So just think like a hacker and keep the detailed notes of a freak. That's basically the plan. And then, you know, finding the fares. Yeah, like it isn't super easy. Like you have to know that with Alaska points, you can book a flight on Cathay Pacific over the phone, which you found on Qantas' website and Qantas and Cathay Pacific are not the same airlines. So

that's the challenge that you're up against when you actually want to use these points. Like, do you have to like call someone, realize this person's not going to help you and try calling another day and try it over and over until you finally find somebody who knows exactly how to get through the Qantas website to find the flight you need? We have a word for it. Huwaka. What is that? Hang up and call again. Oh, okay. I mean, there's a scene of people that are into this kind of stuff. So it's, yeah, I mean, we have our own words and Huaca is a word. Crazy, huh?

Not only is he able to get on free flights, but he's getting on flights that even travel agents don't know exist. But all these methods and schemes are all legit and legal. The airlines are the ones who set these systems up. And while it seems like he's exploiting the system, he's really just using it the way it was intended, just kind of in an extreme couponing kind of way. Yeah, this is okay. So let's say I'm not as extra, you know, exotic as you trying to go all these crazy places. Could I, is it just as easy for me to sign up for two credit cards, you know, get those points and then travel all over the U.S. on just regular regular class tickets and get tons of free flight that way? Is that as simple as that?

You can. redeeming points for premium cabin international flights is far and above what you would get by redeeming for, you know, say a flight to Tulsa, right? Oh, yes. There's this whole theory of how to use your points in the most effective way that comes into play. Just credit card points by themselves are actually worth money. I mean, you can use them to pay off the credit card if you want or get gift cards in stores that you're already visiting.

So you might want to calculate how much you're getting per point if you book a domestic trip using this. Suppose that a 70,000 point flight costs $7,000 normally. Well, that's around 10 cents per point, right, in value. If the flight was 11,000, like, you know, it's even more. All right. So if you bought an $11,000 trip with those 70,000 points, you're getting 15 cents per point, which means a more expensive the trip is it's actually a better value as far as where you spend your points. Think about it like this. Imagine going to a buffet, but you're charged on how much your food weighs. Well, a potato is pretty heavy versus say a salad. So you can either have one potato or five giant salads for the same price.

So you could run calculations all day, trying to figure out the most cost-effective way to spend your points. But, you know, I first laughed at T-Profit for wasting money on first-class airfare, knowing that it's just overpriced. But first of all, he got it free. And second of all, flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong is a 14 hour flight. And Hong Kong to Johannesburg is another 13 hour flight. And when you're doing trips that long, it is really nice to have a bed to sleep in on the way. So yeah, I guess I'm just flabbergasted at this point. Gosh, to understand all this, it's a little dizzying to know all these options. I think most people don't even understand all these options exist out there. I mean, when I book a flight, I go to Hipmunk and then I find the cheapest one and I get on it.

You know, that's a totally valid approach. If travel isn't a super high priority to you, and you don't want to throw a lot of your personal bandwidth at it. You know, I have a small business helping people book flights. And so, you know, I just work in these programs every day. Like, I got into owning a business doing this by just doing it with my own personal travel. And then it kind of grew into a blog and then it grew into the small business that I have. So it's clearly I've taken this way farther than most people do and that's totally okay. So the thing to know is that if you want to consume the output of what getting a bunch of points can get you, there are people who for money will help you with this. And, you know, they're just professional travel hackers.

And that is a thing. So, you know, totally okay to go that route if you don't want to learn it all on your own. See, I didn't even know any of this existed until now. But as it turns out, T-Profit actually started a company which helps people do this. And his website is called award.cat. And there's another epic trip T-Prophet went on. In 2019, he went to travel from Seattle to Sri Lanka, which is an island off the southern tip of India.

So I booked Seattle, LA on Alaska, first class Alaska. And then this was again using Alaska mileage plan miles. That's my favorite way to get Cathay Pacific. Cathay Pacific first, LA, Hong Kong, and then Cathay Pacific business because that's the only cabin they operate from Hong Kong to Sri Lanka. Okay, so just regular class to LA? Oh, no, no. Regular first class on Alaska. So like in the front of the plane. First class to L.A. But not a lie flat seat because Alaska just has those recliners. Yeah.

It's just the extra wide one. Yeah, it's the extra wide one. So the first class there to L.A. And then the fancy Quattis lounge in L.A., the Quattis first class lounge. You know, you get lounges, too, with these tickets. Like you can be in the very, first class lounge. You know, you get lounges too with these tickets. Like you can be in the very, very fancy lounge. And what's in the fancy lounge in LA's Qantas? It's the best first class lounge in the US.

They bring you a proper Australian breakfast, which was very much appreciated because I started way too early in the morning. In LA? In LA. Okay. I mean, yeah, it's Qantas. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's nice. They have fast wifi. It's, they, they have like,

you know, table side service. So they just kind of bring food to you. You don't have to go to a buffet or anything that they're just like, you know, they wait on you hand and foot in there. You got massage chairs. It's really nice. Now, in case you don't know, in these first class lounges, everything is free. Free Wi-Fi, free buffet with food, free alcoholic drinks. And in this one, there was a free massage. So that is included with the flay or you have to pay extra for that? Or how did you get it? No, it's included because you've got a first class ticket. So you get all the first class services and amenities, including the fancy lounge. Yeah, I could have gone to the Cathay lounge, but like the Qantas one's fancier and Cathay and Qantas are partners. So I was able to get into the Qantas lounge. Okay, so then you get on your Cathay flight. That's a first class to Hong Kong.

Yeah, you know, crude champagne, caviar, the whole nine yards. I don't eat caviar, can't do the fish. So but you know you know yeah you get waited on hand and foot turn down service everything it's super nice and then in hong kong somebody meets you at the plane and they whisk you through like back corridors to your next flight expedited security the whole nine yards like you walk off the you walk off the plane you're one of the first people off and there's like somebody holding a sign with your name on it, and they're like, right this way, Mr. Key Profit. And it's just like, boom, they just whisk you to the next gate. Full VIP security treatment the whole nine yards.

You go through a special security. It's not the normal one. It's a special one just for you. And yeah, then I was on my next flight to, which was pretty empty, to Sri Lanka. But while he was on the trip to Sri Lanka, disaster struck. And I don't mean he lost his baggage or his headphones battery went dead. Much worse than that. We begin tonight with a horrific scene unfolding overseas. Eight bomb attacks targeting Christians and tourists in Sri Lanka and a ninth bomb targeting police.

The series of explosions tearing through churches filled with worshipers attending Easter Mass. More than 200 people killed, hundreds hurt, several Americans among the victims. He learned about this just before he started the trip, so he could have canceled this whole flight. But he scheduled this a year in advance and went through a ton of hoops to make this happen. Well, I could have left the airport if I wanted to. But like there's, you know, the whole country was on state of emergency curfew lockdown. I mean, it's like not a like when there's just been like a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in a country like, you know, this isn't a really fun time to be like running around being a tourist. Like you don't want to do that. So you booked this this isn't a really fun time to be like running around being a tourist. Like you don't want to do that.

So you booked this whole flight a year in advance? Yeah, I booked it almost a year in advance, which was why I didn't want to give it up. Like why I was like, okay, what can I do to go onward from Sri Lanka? Yeah. So you, so I mean, the thing is, is that you're arriving in this place that you don't want to be in. And so you've got it, you're looking for a flight out. Yep. But usually you buy a flight a year in advance for the cheapest price.

Well, so here's how I did this. Sri Lankan Airlines is part of one world. So is Cathay Pacific. So I looked for how I could get onto Sri Lankan Airlines onward to somewhere. And there were two places I looked at. One was the Maldives and the other was the Seychelles. And the thing with the Maldives is it's really, really expensive once you get there.

I mean, it's a place to go for like a honeymoon or like a baby moon or something. I don't have any romantic whatever. Like there's, in fact, I'd just been broken up with. So I was like, I'm not really in the mood for that. So I looked at the Seychelles and, you know, there's like mid-range places that mostly cater to French people for some reason. So that's like, you know, 50, 60, $70 a night. And I thought, okay, like that's a little more reasonable. I can do that in a rental car and I'll be like really near these beach.

And the beaches in the Seychelles are all public. So even if there's a really fancy resort there, you can still go to the beach. So that's what I did. I booked a local place, which was thoroughly unmemorable, but it was fine. And I booked a local car and I booked Sri Lankan Airlines to the Seychelles onward from Sri Lanka on an itinerary that all worked. So to buy that flight to Seychelles, would you use points to get there too? Of course. Or did you have to pay out of pocket?

So I used my favorite friend, British Airways Avios. So what I did is I transferred some points from Chase over to British Airways Avios. So what I did is I transferred some points from Chase over to British Airways, and I used British Airways program to book on Sri Lankan Airlines. And I got right up in the front. I got to sit next to the chief engineer, which was super fun. How long was this flight? It's

maybe a four-hour flight. Wow. That's farther than I thought. Yeah, it's not super far. So, I mean, it's four hours up there. I mean, you're going from Sri Lanka, like, all the way off off the coast of, it's actually off the coast of Mogadishu. Yeah. So, if you go due west, then you're in Somalia. I think this is an extraordinary skill or knowledge set to have. To first understand what banks and credit card companies offer the most points for using their cards,

then to know what airlines these points can be redeemed at, then to know what trips those airlines offer with those points, and then to be able to navigate this whole system to make changes so that even if there's a terrorist attack, you still have a lovely time. Yeah, it's pretty fun. So onward from the Seychelles. So here's the thing. Like coming back, I had a ticket coming back from Sri Lanka.

And I had to, so it wasn't only getting from Sri Lanka to somewhere else. It was also like fixing my return, right? Because I'd booked that well in advance as well. And it was on Qatar Q Suites. Oh, right. So he didn't go back the way he came. His return trip was to go from Sri Lanka to Doha, Qatar, a country in the Middle East, then take one of those Q-suite flights all the way to Los Angeles back home. And these Q-suite seats are amazing. Each spacious seat, a private personal living space, sets a new precedent in comfort. Featuring maximum compatibility for all your devices, including HDMI and USB ports,

your seat also comes equipped with ambient, adjustable mood lighting and fully lie-flat beds. These luxury seats sometimes have multiple TVs in your seat. Q-Suite has one TV in your suite, but the thing's like a 23-inch plasma screen. And you get a table next to you to put your laptop on. And there's ports all over the place for laptops or tablets or whatever, which is really nice for a 16 hour flight, which are really, really, really hard to book. It's the best business class in the world. There's this door that slides shut, like, you know, you get your own little suite. It's pretty amazing. So I didn't want to give that up. And what I ended up doing was looking and there was availability from the Seychelles up to Doha.

What I ended up doing was just throwing myself on the mercy of American Airlines. So I found an itinerary that could work. But normally, American charges you a lot of money to change a flight. It's like $150 change fee plus the difference in the miles. And I called them up and I'm like, there were just terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka and I'm not going there anymore. Like, is there any possible way you'd make an exception and change the return from, you know, to a different city? I know this isn't in policy, but like terrorism, you know, terrorist attack. And they're like, yeah, we'll make a one-time exception because, you know, like there's active attacks going on in that country, but don't expect this in the future, blah, blah, blah. And they did charge me the difference in miles, which was like another 5,000 miles, I think.

So he was able to arrange his flight back again using just points, but he couldn't get the timing just right. His trip was screwed up just a little bit. So he had a 14-hour overnight layover in Qatar. And so one option is just to sleep at the gate in the terminal somewhere. And I've done this before. In fact, I slept right on the doorway to my gate so that when they open the door and start letting passengers on, they would have to wake me up. But, of course, T-Profit has a better plan. So fun thing, Qatar Airlines, if you have a business class ticket, you can buy up to the first class lounge.

And the first class lounge has bedrooms. They're like little hotel rooms. So I paid around $70 to get one of those bedrooms. And I was able to just sleep overnight, you know, in the first class lounge, come out, have very fancy breakfast in the morning, and then hop my flight back to LA. So do you have something booked for the future? I do. I've got a flight to Uzbekistan,

returning from Kazakhstan, and that's in May. So you're flying to Uzbekistan, then flying to Kazakhstan, then flying back? Yeah, it's a little dicey, though, because it's in May. Yeah, that's a little early. It's from Vancouver, BC. Because here in the Pacific Northwest, we have three major airports, Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, BC.

And a lot of the time, fairly often, I end up flying from Vancouver when I'm going internationally because it's just easier to find availability. So this is on Turkish from Vancouver to Istanbul and then Istanbul to Tashkent. And then I'm returning from Almaty to Istanbul and

Istanbul back to Vancouver. And these are all first class? Business. That's what Turkish operates. And they have the world's best catering on board. That's their thing. They've got an on-board chef. Wow. It's pretty fun.

Wow. That's something. So where do we learn more about how to do this? Or do you want to talk about how you can help people? Sure. You can check award.cat uh and that's our paid service and if you want to read uh my blog it's it's kind of out of date but that's seat31b.com that's s-e-a-t-3-1-b like boy.com why isB the thing, the seat for you? So for me, so keep in mind, like I like this fancy stuff sitting up in front.

But for me, remember, my goal is to join the Traveler Century Club. I want to visit 100 countries or territories. And that's kind of the track that I'm on right now, which means that if I'm going somewhere like Palau and the only seat is the one all the way in the back next to the toilets that doesn't recline, I am happy to have that seat as long as it's free. Now, these are all legal ways to get free flights. Not only does T-Profit follow the letter of the law, but also follows the spirit of the rules. But there are people doing some

gray and even black hat travel hacks out there. For instance, there's this one crazy dude who prints up fake business cards just to get better deals in places. My business cards are not a hoax, okay? It's a matter of excellence. You know, if it's $1,000 a night, but Raytheon gets it for $195, I think you're a schmuck if you don't become a Raytheon employee through Vistaprint for $4.95. Yeah, so he uses a fake business card to sort of prove he works at some place to get a corporate discount. Another thing this guy likes to do is book a refundable ticket, which comes with free access to the airport's first class lounge. And then he'll go to the lounge all day

and do work. And then he'll cancel his flight and get his money back, which essentially gave him free lounge access. What he's doing is wrong, and he knows it. And you know what? If airlines figure out that you're trying to cheat the system, they'll come at you and cancel your flight. There's a thing called a contract of carriage, which many airlines adopt as their rules. And if you break the rules by misrepresenting yourself or just being too much of a pain in the butt, they'll straight up cancel your return trip home and leave you stranded. So you really got to watch out what advice you follow. Another great area of getting free flights is this whole credit card juggling thing where you just go back and forth paying off credit cards with credit cards to get free points.

Of course, credit card companies don't like it. And we'll try to spot this sort of thing. And also, I want to reiterate this whole method that T-Profit uses to get points through credit cards, only try that if you're good at paying off your credit cards every month. If you have to pay interest fees to get points, it's never worth the points. So this method isn't for everyone. And there's also black hat methods for free flights. So like, this is when you're stealing other people's miles or points and transferring them to your account.

Because if you could somehow put 100,000 points into your account, you could fly wherever you wanted for free. And you could do this by hacking into someone else's credit card rewards portal and transferring the points to you or hack into the airlines themselves and just put points into your account. So don't do that because that's illegal. But if you're really bent on hacking an airline to get free flights, there is a legal way to do that. United Airlines has a bug bounty program where they pay rewards for anyone who can find vulnerabilities in their systems. And guess what? They can pay you in rewards points if you prefer. So go check out their bug bounty program, figure out what's in scope, and go hack your way to some free trips.

A big thank you to Alex Hope, aka Mango PDF, for your story. You can find more about Alex at their blog, which is mango.pdf.zone. Also, thanks to T-Profit for sharing some pretty extreme flight hacking tips with us. You can read his blog at seat31b.com. Check out award.cat if you want help spending your travel points effectively. If you like this show, if it brings value to you, consider donating to it through Patreon. By directly supporting the show, it really does help keep the show going, because most of all, it tells me that you like it and want more of it. So please visit patreon.com

slash darknetdiaries and consider supporting the show. Thank you. This show is made by me, the low flyer, Jack Recyder. This episode was produced by the travel size Christian Green, and our theme music is done by the sonic booming Breakmaster Cylinder. And even though I root around in an HTML ball pit just for fun sometimes, this is Darknet Diaries.