Bengaluru: Nandan Kumar, a software engineer who took an IndiGo flight from Patna to Bengaluru recently, realised that he had picked up the wrong luggage from the baggage belt after he reached home. That meant, his luggage had been mistakenly picked up by a co-passenger.
He found it but with little help from the airline. So how did he locate it?
The engineer put to use his skills as a software developer on IndiGo’s website, located the co-passenger and got his luggage back. A thrilled Kumar shared his ‘hacking moment’ on Twitter.
It began like this. He called the airline’s customer care, which was not ready to provide him the contact details of the person citing privacy and data protection. The airline said they would call back.
When they didn’t, Kumar said he decided to take the matter into his own hands. Luggage found, he also pointed out security flaws in the airline’s website and urged IndiGo to fix it.
While apologising for the inconvenience caused, IndiGo said its website had no security lapses.
So long story short I couldn’t get any resolution on the issue. And neither your customer care team was not ready to provide me the contact details of the person citing privacy and data protection . @Ankurkrtweets take note of this, it gets interesting😝
5/n— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022
After the call did not work, the agent assured me that they will call me back when they are able to reach the other person. (I am still waiting for that call ) 👇🏻 6/n pic.twitter.com/uy7tkqWUO7
— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022
So now, after all the failed attempts, my dev instinct kicked in and I pressed the F12 button on my computer keyboard and opened the developer console on the @IndiGo6E website and started the whole checkin flow with network log record on.
9/n— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022
And there in one of the network responses was the phone number and email I’d of my co-passenger.
Ah this was my low-key hacker moment 😇😇 and the ray of hope.
I made note of the details and decided to call the person and try to get the bags swapped. #dev #dataleak #bug pic.twitter.com/9l4pmNDk6V
— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022
And thankfully I was able to reach my co passenger with the phone number I got from the logs and luckily we lived in a close proximity of 6-7 KMs. So we decided to meet at a Center point and got our bags swapped.
Dear @IndiGo6E , take note of my next tweet and try to improve.
— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022
— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) March 29, 2022
