Computing technology is responsible for plenty of the physical securities in Passengers. However, the movie suggests that the manner in which these technologies are designed was not well thought out, introducing risks to both passengers and crew members of the ship alike. The main form of security comes from the ID bands that each rider of the Avalon possess. These ID bands are personalized; this can be seen when Jim uses his to access a variety of the entertainment features on the Avalon.[1] These bands also divide the different types of ticket buyers on the ship, giving those who purchased more luxury rooms security in said rooms from potential invaders. These high-class suites are easy to break into, however, as Jim was able to bypass the ID scanner requirement when he broke into the Vienna Suite with materials provided to him by the ship.[2] This single hijacking appeared to make the suite accessible to all who wished to enter it for the rest of the movie, putting Jim in harm's way when Aurora entered it late in the night to physically assault him.[3]
On top of the lack of security when it comes to passengers and their private quarters, the security in regards to authorized areas that only crew can access isn't the strongest either. Like passengers, crew members of the Avalon also have ID bands. These bands, however, have special privileges, allowing them to access otherwise closed off rooms like the control rooms, reactor, and engine. The physical doors blocking off these rooms are undeniably more protective in comparison to the likes of the Vienna Suite.[4] The computing technology protecting these same areas, however, are weak in comparison, especially considering the time period in which the film takes place. Thousands of interstellar flights have already occurred at the time Aurora and Jim are awake on the Avalon, and in a deleted scene featuring Gus, it is mentioned that he himself had already been on 5 separate journeys with the Avalon.[5] This suggests that centuries have spent since the development of interplanetary colonization.
And yet, the only security measure when it comes to entering a crew-related room on the ship is a scan of the ID band. Unlike modern security measures available to consumers in our own day and age, such as fingerprint reading or facial identification–more reliable methods of identifying an individual [6]–an ID is all the Avalon requires for a person to enter an essential room that is pivotal to the ship's operation. Before Gus passes away in the movie, he gives Jim and Aurora his ID; this is all they need to access any area of the ship that they would like to.[7] Their story amongst other interstellar flights is an outlier. On an average flight, in which crew members and passengers alike are awake 4 months before arriving at a new colony, there are 258 opportunities for a single passenger with malicious intent to perform social engineering, amongst other ways of obtaining a crew member's ID. With this, they could cause harm to the Avalon and its passengers by tampering with parts of the ship they otherwise wouldn't have access to. Gus mentions to Jim and Aurora when they enter a room designated for crew members only to not touch anything [8]; this goes to show that a single input can result in disaster, and that power could be in any passenger's hands.
It can be claimed that those who managed to obtain access to rooms designated to be crew-only would not be able to do much harm, and there is higher security that points to this. When Jim pressed a button in the navigation room on the Avalon, his input had no effect, as the ship proclaimed that he was "unauthorized personnel."[9] This does suggest that there is higher security technology incorporated into the Avalon, such as biometrics. However, this security is not consistent throughout the ship. For example, Jim was also able to remove the reactor control computer without similar nor higher security features preventing this action of his.[10] Even if a passenger couldn't cause harm by inputting specific commands in a room such as the navigation room, they could still easily inflict damage to the Avalon and its inhabitants by removing a necessary computer, with the only security feature preventing them from such capabilities still only being a crew ID scanner.
While the physical security of the Starship Avalon is not the strongest, its network security does appear to be reliable. This is showcased in the complete lack of system infections present within the ship and any other ship mentioned throughout Passenger's runtime. No spaceships like the Avalon have become victim to malware or cyber attacks, as the first ship to ever fail was the one featured in the film. And this failure was not as a result of a passenger or Earth-bound human hacking its network; it was a combination of nature's influence and a lack of redundancy features implemented into the Avalon. The movie certainly could have had an interesting conclusion, however, had the reasoning behind the Avalon's slow but steady failure being caused by a worm or something along similar lines. This is especially because the writer of Passengers, Jon Spaihts, found that "[a] human antagonist becomes completely unnecessary" when the concept of space and its dangers serves as the setting for a story.[11]
