Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes • Hacker News Board

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#481

Post by hunter2_ » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:06 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #378

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #280

Nice reverse engineering! As a hacky way for the non-tech-savvy, couldn't you use a temp account to create ticketmaster account and then buy the ticket and then sell the temp account information to bypass their rules? This reverse-engineering also breaks if ticketmaster forces venue staff to only scan if the barcode is in the ticketmaster app. Unless you create a lookalike app to trick the staffers.

I am not an expert, but I think one of their layers of protections (that is, to ensure that TM itself gets the greatest share of scalping money) is applying much greater scrutiny to freshly-created accounts when it comes to the in-demand events. I'm not sure how they effectively bootstrap new legit users of course, but I've been offered I think around $100 to sell my Ticketmaster account, which is old. (I can't recal…

> bootstrap new legit users

Phone number? The friction/expense of a scalper getting a new one for every sale would seem sufficient. Although I guess the scalper could reclaim (via password reset or whatever) accounts after the show to some extent.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#482

Post by deathanatos » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:12 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #10

> 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.

> 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?

Note that the portion of that you're quoting that you didn't quote is "If you bought the ticket off the event’s official ticketing agency (not a sketchy reseller)"

I.e., we're specifically talking about someone holding a ticket that they purchased from Ticketmaster. If there are multiple copies floating about, presumably at some point the artist (/the actual event) is going to be unhappy that Ticketmaster is screwing their fans/attendees over.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#483

Post by yonatan8070 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:25 AM UTC

grishka wrote: post #424

IncreasePosts wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalping is still possible without understanding the tech - you could just stream a video of the bar codes and sell the stream instead of selling the ticket.

Good luck getting enough signal to play a video stream in a large crowd.

You don't need to truly stream a video capture of the app, you can have a scanner on the server side decode the barcode in the web/virtualized Android app and then only stream a couple hundred bytes, having the client regenerate the barcode

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#484

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:38 AM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #445

_puk wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that horse has already bolted.. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hac...

Yeah that has literally nothing to do with their app. If you submitted your data on their website, it'd be leaked just the same

You're implying that the data from the app is stored in a different more secure manner than the data from the website? That makes zero sense. The fact that they got hacked and is the only thing that matters, not which mode of input you provided the data they did not protect.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#485

Post by condiment » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:51 AM UTC

muppetman wrote: post #363

noodlesUK wrote: post #27

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.

No, it's not. At my work here we'll all go online to try and get tickets to a big gig. One of us might get in, so that person will get ~8 tickets or whatever the maximum is. And then we split them between us, transfering over cash etc. If we have a few left over we'll sell them to friends for the ticket value. But none of us have any intention of lining up with the others to get in. We want to go with our partners, o…

This is trivial and solutions exist in the wild already. If you buy tix for the Paris Olympics, you can transfer them to your friends or you can assign their names to the tickets directly.

The interesting mechanism there is that you can buy a lot of seats at once, but you don’t get to choose where they are exactly, only the section. So in every case you’re going to have people buying big lots of tickets and distributing them to friends and family after the fact.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#486

Post by pompino » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:54 AM UTC

citruscomputing wrote: post #427

pompino wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good/Bad are consensus votes. Its hard to escape their use just because of how deeply ingrained the programming is. We just think it makes "sense" and is "obvious" because its a meme that is already in our head. There is nothing inherently evil or good about any past/present/future animal on this planet.

I hate this website.

Lots of people do.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#487

Post by gitgud » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:57 AM UTC

phoronixrly wrote: post #34

With regards to the end of the article. > Can I work for a bad company and still be a good person? > No. https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201121

All company's are "bad" in some way... does that mean all employees are bad?

> No.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#488

Post by vdqtp3 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 5:09 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #291

yellowapple wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or business travelers would be traveling on leisure fares. Don't they already do that anyway? Every time I've gotten on a plane for work purposes, there was no differentiation between "business traveler" v. "leisure traveler" as far as the ticket purchasing process was concerned. Hell, in the most recent case it was even with my own credit card (for which I submitted an expense report to be reimbursed) - so for all…

The rates are typically different if you stay a Saturday night. Business travelers go home on Friday night. (SFO-NYC on Friday night was always a tough flight to book. I usually stayed the extra night so I could fly 1st or Business for less money.) If you could buy someone else's ticket on the secondary market, then you could do a split ticket thing where you both stay Saturday night but neither of you actually do. E…

> The rates are typically different if you stay a Saturday night.

I recently flew from the US to Europe and returning on Thursday or Friday was twice the price of flying home on Saturday or Sunday - the weekend return options actually showed up as free during booking.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#489

Post by trustno2 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 5:15 AM UTC

Ocha wrote: post #434

bonestamp2 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another good point in here. Why do they hold the ticket until just before the event? I bought tickets to a concert for my wife's favorite band. Then, my wife's work scheduled an event for that same week and she had to leave town. So, what I really wanted was a refund so someone else could buy the tickets. They don't do that of course. So, then I wanted to sell the tickets for face value... but ticketmaster di…

Just vote with your pocket and don’t buy tickets from them. I do that - yes I don’t get to go to major concerts but there are still so much more that is not on ticket master. I found a lot of new entertainment and was happy to pay $4 fee instead of whatever TM charges nowadays.

They have an effective monopoly.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#490

Post by xp84 » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #358

miki123211 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dutch auction is really hard because different tickets have different prices, different people have different requirements about where they want to sit (a committed disabled fan may be willing to pay any price, but they can't do standing only) and there are many different price tiers. A better idea is an airline-style dynamic pricing system that considers different variables, current demand, projected demand, type…

The simplest way of implementing dynamic pricing is a resale market, where the price of tickets changes based on supply and demand.

Sure, it perfectly sets the market clearing price at all times, but it has the inefficiency that the performer can end up with only a fraction of the total amount the attendees are willing to pay. All those middlemen add value not in a way that feels fair, like collecting a percentage fee. Rather, they get all the upside whenever popular shows sell out. I can see why artists don't like that.