Reverse-Engineering Ticketmaster’s Barcode System

Reverse-Engineering Ticketmaster’s Barcode System

Interesting:

By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS.

Tags: hacking, reverse engineering

Posted on July 9, 2024 at 12:27 PM • 7 Comments

Clive Robinson • July 9, 2024 2:25 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

All of these “ticket systems” can be got around because there is a fatal flaw in all of the systems.

It is a very general failure that I’ve mentioned before, as has the the then head of the UK’s MI5 I won’t go into it in depth again people can search the blog.

But simply,

There is no way to reliably tie a physical object like a ticket or human to a piece of information.

And as tickets are seen as an unessecary loss of profit they are either not issued or issued in a form that is easily forgeable.

As Stella Rimington noted nearly two decades ago,

“All our other documents are quite easily forgeable and if you have ID cards at great expense and people can go into the back room and forge them then they are going to be absolutely useless”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/17/idcards.immigrationpolicy

So if you can work out how to forge the information, then you can make as many tickets as you want.

Just turn up early so you present the information first.

MrC • July 9, 2024 9:36 PM

Does this intersect at all with the ransomware actors that are releasing stolen ticketmaster barcodes?

Jon (a different Jon) • July 10, 2024 11:01 AM

What I find interesting (I didn’t sign up, so couldn’t read the whole article – pardon me if I’m completely out in left field) is that they’re suing over reverse-engineering.

This is exactly what copyright and patent laws are for – reveal it, get protection. Don’t reveal it, keep it as a trade secret, and although you can keep it as a secret, you are always at risk of someone else successfully reverse-engineering it.

But noo, apparently someone violated the DMCA or something? Kinda makes a mockery of the whole thing, that.

J.

Arclight • July 10, 2024 12:21 PM

The purpose of the Ticketmaster system isn’t to prevent scalping. It’s there to prevent scalping by entities other than Ticketmaster.

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