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When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

mango.pdf.zone

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Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#31

Post by bmarquez »

chris_wot wrote: post #27
aahortwwy wrote: post #6

> “You could drop me in the bush and I’d feel perfectly confident navigating my way out, looking at the sun and direction of rivers and figuring out where to go, but this! Hah!” I mean not to call him out but this did happen and he didn't navigate his way out (although that says nothing about his confidence). https://www.smh.com.au/national/tony-abbott-lost-in-the-outb... EDIT: To be fair, it's been a decade. Maybe h…

Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect? Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.

I don't get it, is there something noteworthy about eating a raw onion?

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#32

Post by parksy »

carrolldunham wrote: post #11

clickbait. no "passport" is found. very long winded insufferable hooting about finding the passport number from an instagrammed boarding pass booking number. is that still a big security hole? i guess. could have been one tweet though

The full title is "When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's passport number" not sure why the title here omits "number" but it is there on the actual post.

Also as someone that hasn't ever done anything like this before, it was interesting to read the journey from end to end, specifically the steps taken to try and responsibly disclose a security breach and the hoops he jumped through which might seem obvious for someone who does it on the regular, but was somewhat enlightening to someone who has never encountered something like this in life.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#33

Post by stordoff »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

I don’t know if it’s just me or it’s the fact that I’m reading this on mobile on a small screen but I couldn’t stand the writing style. Curious to know if anyone else felt that way.

I found myself rolling my eyes a few times, but the core content was good so I didn't find it all that off-putting.

"Update: I have been arrested." did leave me slightly confused for a while though, probably due to the verbosity making me want to scan read.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#34

Post by nicwilson »

bmarquez wrote: post #31
chris_wot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect? Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.

I don't get it, is there something noteworthy about eating a raw onion?

When you use it to hide the breath of an alcoholic, yes.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#35

Post by boyter »

bmarquez wrote: post #31
chris_wot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, this is the guy who knighted a prince and ate a raw onion. What did you expect? Abbott was Australia's Trump. Thankfully he lasted in office an even shorter time than the people he replaced.

I don't get it, is there something noteworthy about eating a raw onion?

Yes and no. It was the pinnacle in a series of bizzare behaviour from Tony while he was the Prime Minister. Certainly its the one people most remember of him. Keep in mind he ate it with the skin on as well. I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.

When I was working on an archive project for the ABC, "tony eating onion" or some variation was the most common thing people searched for in the system when they first started using it.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#36

Post by SamBam »

anon9001 wrote: post #29
POiNTx wrote: post #20

Apart from the really interesting content, this is an extremely good read, strikes me as the right kind of balance of information and keeping you entertained. I really enjoyed this writing style!

This was really a delight to read. I wonder if the author was raised on 2600. Fantastic stuff. Also visited his page. Does not disappoint: https://mango.pdf.zone/

Figured the least I could do after reading the article was crack the puzzle, and felt good that I did since I usually fail at these kinds of things.

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#37

Post by function_seven »

kccqzy wrote: post #26

Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…

Your advice is good, and I agree that you didn't use specialized software to reverse the blur, but this

> I didn't use any specialized software; it was just Mathematica with its built-in ImageDeconvolve function with guessed parameters for the Gaussian kernel.

is one of the most HN comments I've come across recently :)

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#38

Post by fphhotchips »

I feel like this buries the lede massively: Qantas' system was run by Amadeus, who also run the booking system for some 200 other airlines [0]. If you could do this with Qantas and get all those notes, you could probably do it to any other airline and get them too. That would be bad enough, but it also appears that this issue (or one very much like it) has been reported widely at least back in early 2019.

So, either Amadeus didn't fix the issue until it was disclosed here (very very bad) or Qantas didn't update their booking system for a security patch (also very bad).

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/amadeus-airline-booking-vu...

Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number

#40

Post by netsharc »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

I don’t know if it’s just me or it’s the fact that I’m reading this on mobile on a small screen but I couldn’t stand the writing style. Curious to know if anyone else felt that way.

Couldn't stand it either, since I (probably like most of us here) know about the "scan the 2d barcode to get the booking number, use that and passenger last name to see their flight details" trick. The kid draws out that first bit for too long. Although he did get clever and used the developer tools (again here he goes into boring details) to find the actual passport number as some hidden JSON, and some other internal airline info...
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