Leaked 'No Fly' List Sets Internet Abuzz


A foreign hacker has obtained an old copy of the U.S. government's "No Fly" list from an unsecured server belonging to a commercial airline. 

The list, which was discovered by a Swiss hacker known as "maia arson crimew," contains 1.5 million entries containing names and birth dates of individuals who have been barred from air travel by the government due to suspected or known ties to terrorist organizations. 

A screenshot from a video shared by TSA. Source: Twitter/@TSA

The hacker stumbled upon the list from 2019 on an unsecured Amazon Web Services cloud server used by a commercial airline CommuteAir. 

Names and birthdates of individuals on the list were easily accessible, along with multiple aliases, making it clear that the number of unique individuals on the list was far less than 1.5 million.

The list was among the trending topics online on Jan. 22, 2022, according to Google Trends.

The TSA has acknowledged the potential cybersecurity incident and is investigating the data breach. Noteworthy individuals on the list include Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and suspected members of the IRA. 



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