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Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

conduition.io

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Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#51

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

[flagged]

GenAI?

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#52

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

Yup. I have to believe the reason the likes of ticket master isn't fixing this is because they are selling/auctioning/reserving some percentage of tickets to scalpers or "3rd party sellers". Requiring ID is such an obvious solution that I have to believe these convoluted approaches are only there so the secondary market can exist and so ticket master can wash their hands when prices get out of control on that market.

I have to presume that the driving impetus of all of this is that they're trying to avoid the actual requirement of checking the ID. Like, they want to improve the flow of traffic through admissions.

But I mean, obviously, any kind of system like this strikes me as the same sort of thing as DRM. That you can somehow protect the message from the person you're sharing the message to. How can you avoid reselling if you don't verify the original purchaser? It just seemes ridiculous on its face.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#53

I agree with the bad implement but the opening complaining that "old way of printable tickets was great why change it" have so many problems. Scalpers are the problem that you have to accept. At the time of purchase, there's no way to tell the difference between a legit purchaser and a scalper or even someone who bought it and simply can't go and needs to resell. IDs, ticket limiters, CCs, etc, etc. All methods can b…

Buying something at a low price and selling it at a high price is arbitrage 101 and is free money.

The "true solution" is to sell tickets at their actual market price instead of pretending that the face value of concert tickets isn't increasing due to a larger population and greater demand.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#54
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Responsible disclosure" is poorly defined corporate wishcasting, and certainly not any sort of best practice or legal shield.

The public prosecutor does not pursue cases where responsible aka coordinated vulnerability disclosure was applied. I'd say that's a legal shield of some kind at least, and it is generally also considered best practice in the industry. There's exceptions to everything but, in the general case, I'm not sure where you're getting these viewpoints from

"The public prosecutor does not pursue cases where responsible aka coordinated vulnerability disclosure was applied."

That seems like a pretty substantial claim to make without any sort of "in [country/state/province/etc.]" qualification, let alone a reference.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#55
> Software developers are the wizards and shamans of the modern age. We ought to use our powers with the austerity and integrity such power implies.

This is one of the most powerful truths underlying the world we currently inhabit. The sooner we can agree to behave accordingly, the better our prospects for ripping the reigns of society from the hands of those whose only animating principles are avarice and exploitation.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#56

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

But also, the hell with this. I'm still sour enough about the TSA without the concept of, "I'll buy tickets for me and three of my friends then see who wants to go," becoming impossible or gated by ticket transfer fees.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#58
post #53

I agree with the bad implement but the opening complaining that "old way of printable tickets was great why change it" have so many problems. Scalpers are the problem that you have to accept. At the time of purchase, there's no way to tell the difference between a legit purchaser and a scalper or even someone who bought it and simply can't go and needs to resell. IDs, ticket limiters, CCs, etc, etc. All methods can b…

Buying something at a low price and selling it at a high price is arbitrage 101 and is free money. The "true solution" is to sell tickets at their actual market price instead of pretending that the face value of concert tickets isn't increasing due to a larger population and greater demand.

> The "true solution" is to sell tickets at their actual market price

That is *a* solution but it isn't *the* solution. The fact that many smart people are not choosing that solution is an indicator that there are some factors to the problem that you aren't considering.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#59

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

People often buy tickets without knowing exactly which of their friends are going to attend with them. This is not true of airplane tickets.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#60
post #16

> There’s no risk that your ticket won’t get you in Isn’t this not true? The risk with printable tickets is that a seller could sell it to multiple people, who all print it out, but then only the first person who uses it can get in? Even if the venue doesn’t check to see if a ticket has already been used, only one person can sit in the actual seat.

>is that a seller could sell it to multiple people, who all print it out They can't "print it out" because it's a rotating code.

> "The risk with printable tickets is..."
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