Alex ASSOCIATED_WITH Australia
Jack states that Alex lives in Australia.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“Alex lives in Australia.”
Episode
02 February 2021 Official episode · Official transcript
research
The episode presents a boarding-pass privacy disclosure involving Alex and Tony Abbott, followed by TProphet's legal and illegal airline-points and travel-hacking examples.
Topics: Boarding-pass and booking-reference confidentiality, Airline account authentication using a booking reference and surname, HTML source inspection and embedded JSON data exposure, Exposure of passport numbers, birth dates, phone numbers, and frequent-flyer numbers, Airline Special Service Request data and CTCM coding, Responsible disclosure and legal uncertainty in security research, Bug bounty programs, Illegal theft or transfer of airline reward points, Travel-points and airline loyalty-program abuse patterns
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Alex ASSOCIATED_WITH Australia
Jack states that Alex lives in Australia.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“Alex lives in Australia.”
mango.pdf.zone DEVELOPED_BY Alex
Alex has and maintains the blog mango.pdf.zone, where they document things they have hacked.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“Alex has a blog. It’s called mango.pdf.zone where they document different things they’ve hacked.”
Alex USES Google Chrome
Alex used Google Chrome to begin researching the boarding pass.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alex EP 84 Details
“I opened up Google Chrome and just started typing in the bar at the top”
Alex used Google to research what information on the boarding pass was sensitive and how it could be used.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“After some Googling, Alex found out that their first target should be the bar code”
Alex used Photoshop to adjust the boarding-pass image in an attempt to scan its barcode.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alex EP 84 Details
“I went into Photoshop and tried to turn up the contrast”
Alex USES View Source
Alex used the browser’s Inspect/View Source function to examine the airline page’s HTML.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alex EP 84 Details
“I used the only hacker tool I know which is to right click on a page and then click Inspect or Inspect Element.”
passport number exposure INITIAL_ACCESS_VIA boarding pass
The exposure began when Tony Abbott publicly posted a photograph of his boarding pass, which supplied information used to access the booking.
Explicit Direction flagged Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“By posting your boarding pass, someone can use that information to log into the airline’s website”
passport number exposure INVOLVES Qantas
The incident involved access to Tony Abbott’s Qantas Manage Booking page and exposure of information in that page.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“Alex was now logged into Qantas Airline’s [00:10:00] website as the former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott”
passport number exposure INVOLVES Tony Abbott
The incident concerned Tony Abbott’s boarding pass and exposed personal information associated with him.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alex EP 84 Details
“I think I have the former prime minister’s passport number.”
passport number exposure INVOLVES Alex
Alex investigated the boarding pass, accessed the booking page, found the exposed information, and reported it.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“Alex took on the challenge of hacking the former PM Tony Abbott’s boarding pass”
passport number exposure INVOLVES HTML
The exposed passport and phone information was present in the HTML source of the booking page.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“someone can use that information to log into the airline’s website and click View Source and see your birth date, passport number”
passport number exposure INVOLVES JSON
The page source contained a large section of JSON data that included the exposed booking information.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Alex EP 84 Details
“there was this big section of JSON, this big section of data just in the page”
passport number exposure INVOLVES Special Service Request
The incident involved airline Special Service Request data containing a phone number associated with the passenger.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“It turned out that Alex had found a section of the code called SSR for Special Service Request.”
passport number exposure INVOLVES CTCM
The incident involved a CTCM note in the airline data that contained the passenger’s phone number.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“one of the notes started with the code CTCM”
Alex USES responsible disclosure
Alex says the activity was done for research and responsible disclosure, including notifying ASD and Qantas.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“This was done for research and to do responsible disclosure”
passport number exposure INVOLVES Australian Signals Directorate
The incident was reported to the Australian Signals Directorate, which requested more information and said it would take over handling the matter.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Alex EP 84 Details
“Here’s this e-mail address where you can report this to ASD.”
seat31B.com DEVELOPED_BY TProphet
TProphet writes and maintains the travel blog seat31B.com.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“He’s a regular contributor to the 2600 Magazine, The Hacker Quarterly. But he also likes writing a travel blog called [00:35:00] seat31B.com.”
Award.Cat DEVELOPED_BY TProphet
TProphet started Award.Cat as a company or paid service that helps people book flights using travel points.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“TProphet actually started a company which helps people do this and his website is called Award.Cat”
TProphet uses the Qantas website to find Cathay Pacific award-flight availability, while booking with Alaska points.
Explicit Confidence 97% · TProphet EP 84 Details
“the one that I use the most for finding Cathay flights is Qantas”
Jack Rhysider REFERENCES The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Jack references a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about buttons.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“which always reminds me of this quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
Darknet Diaries DEVELOPED_BY Jack Rhysider
Jack identifies himself as the person who makes the Darknet Diaries show.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“This show is made by me, the low-flier, Jack Rhysider.”
Jack Rhysider MENTIONS United Airlines bug bounty program
Jack mentions United Airlines’ bug bounty program as a legal way to find vulnerabilities in exchange for rewards points.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 84 Details
“United Airlines has a bug bounty program where they pay rewards for anyone who can find vulnerabilities in their systems.”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T06:51:31.759261+00:00