It is only a matter of time before hackers get their paws
on the high tech scans of naked people from airport security and stick them on
the world wide wibble.
The latest scans which effectively show people naked have
been leaping over many privacy hurdles to get adopted, but according to
AP protection from technological intrusions have not been
looked at yet. So far privacy groups have looked at the security around
the machines themselves, but so far have not been that interested in the
computers that control the x-ray machines.
Ty Miller, chief technology officer of Pure Hacking,
which tests the security of websites and online systems told AP that from the
attackers' perspective the computer that controls the machine is a
softer target.
"The way to hack in and get access to images would
be by accessing the computers controlling them. There's someone sitting there
at a computer hitting 'enter' as people go through [to be scanned], and it's
possible that that computer might have some sort of vulnerability, just as any
desktop might," he said.
Hackers finding any computer weakness would have access
to any data and naked airport scans could be on the web in a few minutes.
"Airport authorities say scanned images will not be stored
and all machines are delivered to airports with [save] functions
disabled," says the US Transport Security Administration.
However if a controlling computer is comprised this will
not be enough. A hacker who installs a trojan onto the machine could
capture a video of what the operator is looking at, and record it. Any hacker attacks would rely on the x-ray machine being
plugged into the airport's computer network, and so connected to the outside
world. To make matters worse the x-ray machines used the same
radio frequency as wifi. This meant a hacker could use a wifi-enabled PC to
hack into the machines and access scanned images.
Although this is tricky to decode it could mean that your
naked jetlagged snaps could be in the public domain in all their flabby
goodness. [speak for yourself. Ed]