Man claims to hack Indian airline website to find lost luggage
· Mar 31, 2022 · NottheBee.com

Customer service got you down?

Tired of dealing with repeated mistakes involving your lost property?

Maybe you can call this guy for help:

Nandan Kumar, 28, called IndiGo - a low-cost carrier - for help, after realising that he had swapped his bag with a co-passenger.

But after IndiGo refused to help him trace the other person, Mr Kumar said he was able to retrieve information about him from the airline website.

IndiGo told the BBC that "at no point was the IndiGo website compromised".

Mr Kumar says he's not a professional hacker, but had to "do something" to retrieve his luggage.

Kumar's woes began when he got off a flight and couldn't find his bag at the luggage belt. Instead, he ended up with an identical bag that had another passenger's belongings.

The airline said it would call Kumar if and when it could reach the other passenger who had taken his bag, but Kumar quickly got tired of waiting and decided to put his experience as a software engineer to use.

He tried various methods - using the check-in process, by editing the booking and updating the contact. But none of it worked.

"After all failed attempts, my developer instinct kicked in and I pressed the F12 button on my computer keyboard and opened the developer console on the IndiGo website," Mr Kumar said. "I thought 'let me check the network logs'."

What he found was surprising - his co-passenger's phone number. "To be frank, I only checked for a phone number or an email. Basically anything I could use to get in touch to retrieve my bag."

Kumar says he was able to contact the other passenger, and that the two met to switch luggage.

IndiGo, meanwhile, says its site is super duper secure and that no hacking took place!


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