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Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

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Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#551

Post by otherme123 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #433
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.

I agree, mostly. What do you do for people without an ID (and without a parent)? Think of the number of people at a Taylor Swift concert who are under 18 -- a lot. Also, checking the name between ticket and ID will slow down entrance by 2-5 times, I guess.

I was recently at a Festival that requires ticket + ID (https://www.resurrectionfest.es). The key to success was to put a little more personal at the gates, maybe 15 people instead of 10. But it is also true that we have the ID document issued in our early teens it not before. Each ticket verification takes 3 more seconds extra to verify the ID matches, no big deal.

Said festival does their own ticket re-sale to avoid scalping but mainly to avoid shady sites that are known to allow the selling of counterfeits. You can only cede your ticket, not sell it. It is not perfect (e.g. if you don't find a buyer for the same price, you can't sell it at a lost to recoup some money. You get your ticket back) but at least is not as bad as the one from Ticketmaster.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#552

Post by passwordoops »

ipsum2 wrote: post #500
mixmastamyk wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder no more—yes.

Do you work at ticketmaster? Otherwise, how do you confirm this?

Rule of thumb when it comes to monopolies: always err on the side of rentierism. In fact, it should be incumbent on their defenders to prove (insert greedy activity) is not practiced by said corporation

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#553

Post by ssl-3 »

hinkley wrote: post #497
acureau wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty smart business move by T-Mobile, I didn't know mobile cell towers were a thing

I’ve never been clear what the main purpose of these things is but they do seem to get deployed for trade shows and such. Maybe for natural disasters? Then there are microcells, which can be privately owned. I worked at a place that had one when I was in mobile. There was a period of time when one of the carriers would sell you one if you were having connectivity issues. It’s possible for instance, living on a hill,…

I first heard of CoWs (cell towers on wheels) from Woodstock '99, when they tried to repeat the debacle of Woodstock '94. (AFAIK, the CoW did not work.)

The idea of cellular networks is simple: Put the "source" of the bandwidth near where the people need it.

The idea of CoWs is also simple: It's the same thing, but it's dynamic and flexible.

---

There was a time in my life when I was using AT&T as an all-you-can-eat LTE provider through a third party as my home Internet access, because reasons (and hear you me, if DOCSIS had been an option then none of this would have happened).

Armed with a hotspot device that had external antenna connectors, band selection, and a Yagi antenna, I found a cell tower that I thought to be about 14 miles away that had consistently good Internet bandwidth. It was a ton better than several other much-closer towers (some only 1 or two miles away), presumably because it had better backhaul(s).

I made quite a study of things to get that dialed in and working reliably. And it was reliable for months. But then: One day, the signal had turned to shit.

So I did the right thing and I drove over to where I thought that tower was, 14 miles out, to have a peek. And the tower was right where I expected it to be.

But there were men actively working on the tower (with ropes and stuff), and a CoW of much-smaller stature was parked there and providing (rather lesser) backup service.

Which, you know: That explained that.

---

They additionally get used some for natural disasters if a tower fails, and also sometimes for other dynamic events like festivals and concerts and such. They're pretty useful when they work, in that a tiny sliver of bandwidth is superior to zero bandwidth. When properly-managed they can reduce contention on neighboring towers so that regular people doing their regular things are less-affected by whatever dynamic event is happening nearby.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#554

Post by nedt »

627467 wrote: post #411
nedt wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t bring my ID to a concert. I don’t have my wallet with me and even if I would they wouldn’t like me to have a backpack. I‘m coming as light and minimal as possible and also would hate to lose my ID jumping around at a concert.

...yet you have a phone (for the moving barcode and whatnot) which is heavier and bulkier than a card?

True. I feel it, it's locked without my face and I can track it.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#555

Post by sbarre »

NavinF wrote: post #496
dylan604 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I'm asserting that the app acquires as much data as the website (ie. whatever you typed into their forms) and it gets leaked all the same. Refusing to install the app makes no sense if you still use the website

An app absolutely can track more data than a website. You don't have the website open/active on your phone at all times, but you have the app installed at all times, even when it's not running.

You do know that apps can record data in the background, right?

A website is also sandboxed by your browser in a much stricter manner than an app is on your phone, at least by default.

I don't have specific information on the Ticketmaster app here, but to say that an app is the same as website from a tracking perspective on a phone is absurd.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#557

Post by silexia »

ikesau wrote: post #14

Really good post! I also found this quote which distilled their position in the 404media coverage of the situation. > “What I can say for sure is that TicketMaster and AXS have had every opportunity to support scam-free third party ticket resale and delivery platforms if they wished: By documenting their ticket QR code cryptography, and by exposing apps and APIs which would allow verification and rotation of ticket s…

Monopoly is the keyword here. Ticketmaster and Boeing and all the other nefarious companies here use PATENTS to prevent competitors from eating their lunch. Patents need to be done away with to allow free competition, don't believe the propaganda about patents helping creators

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#558

Post by skywhopper »

account42 wrote: post #545
trustno2 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have an effective monopoly.

... for a completely optional form of entertainment. At the very least you have the choice not to go to any concerts until there are better options. You can also make that clear to your favorite bands.

lol, people and bands have been complaining about it for 30 years and it’s only gotten worse. Yes, you could skip concerts for the rest of your life, I suppose, to make a point. But it’s not going to fix anything.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#559

Post by skywhopper »

shiroiushi wrote: post #440
mattmaroon wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our options shouldn’t be see no concerts from successful musicians or pay monopoly pricing. This is something government should solve.

Expecting the US government to properly handle monopolies and anti-trust issues is a fool's errand. It's like saying the US government should solve the issue of gun proliferation in the US: it's simply not going to, in our lifetimes.

On the contrary, the US government is probably a lot easier to influence than an entrenched monopoly.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#560

Post by EGreg »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #429
deamanto wrote: post #409

I'd also like to highlight another bad practice by Ticketmaster. When you purchase a ticket from them and resell it on their marketplace, once someone purchases it, they(Ticketmaster) hold your funds and only give you the money ~7-14 business days after the event is over. They say this is to verify the validity of the ticket. On the buyer side, you purchase the ticket from the marketplace and it gets added to your ac…

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…

I’ve never dealt much with TicketMaster, despite them being a monopoly. So my questions here may just be out of naiveté:

1) Why would TicketMaster pay event organizers ahead of time, if the event might be shit and attendees may demand their money back? Rather than having to deal with a lot of chargebacks and making it their own problem with the banks, they might prefer to make sure the event goes off without a hitch and refund people while they still can. Rather than subsidizing the refunds they make the event organizer have to get (and pay for) financing instead, backed by their payout. They might also offer such financing.

2) I get that they hold event organizers hostage by making contracts with the venues for years, that might be an antitrust issue but it’s separate from 1.

3) Why would TicketMaster make scalping easy? Middlemen would just buy up all the tickets and then pump and dump the price, much like early crypto investors in a meme token or altcoin do. So they don’t “deliver” the ticket to you until just before the event, exactly for that reason.

With ChatGPT it’s now easier than ever to impersonate thousands of people at scale, with credit cards and everything. But I will admit, showing up to an event at least once confirms there is a human behind the account. But a first-timer buyer? Shouldn’t be able to resell, no.

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