Grad student points out 2nd security flaw on TSA Web site

WASHINGTON (CNN) — For those keeping score, it’s Chris Soghoian 2; TSA 0. For the second time, the Indiana University graduate student has succeeded in embarrassing the Transportation Security Administration by exposing potential vulnerabilities to its security systems.

Soghoian first caught the government’s attention when he put an airline “boarding pass generator” on his Web site. Visitors to the site generated some 36,000 fake boarding passes before the FBI took it down, Soghoian said. Though the fake passes could not be used to board planes, people on government “watch lists” conceivably could use them to get past airport screening checkpoints, said Soghoian, who said he wanted to shame the TSA into taking action to close the security loophole.

His latest tussle with the TSA is outlined in a report by Rep. Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee, which credits the graduate student with discovering a loophole in a TSA Web site last year that potentially jeopardized private information from scores of people.

–From CNN Producer Mike M. Ahlers