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Scalpers Bought Tickets With CAPTCHA-Busting Botnet
alphadogg writes "Three California men have pleaded guilty to charges they built a network of CAPTCHA-solving computers that flooded online ticket vendors and snatched up the very best seats for Bruce Springsteen concerts, Broadway productions and even TV tapings of Dancing with the Stars. The men ran a company called Wiseguy Tickets, and for years they had an inside track on some of the best seats in the house at many events. They scored about 1.5 million tickets after hiring Bulgarian programmers to build 'a nationwide network of computers that impersonated individual visitors' on websites such as Ticketmaster, MLB.com and LiveNation, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said Thursday in a press release. The network would 'flood vendors computers at the exact moment that event tickets went on sale,' the DoJ said. They had to create shell corporations, register hundreds of fake Internet domains (one was stupidcellphone.com) and sign up for thousands of bogus e-mail addresses to make the scam work."
Exactly. Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
If the true market value is higher than the face value, then I think the right of first sale should apply. I should be able to buy something for $X, and sell it for $2X if the market will support it.
I'll never understand why "scalping" is illegal in the first place.
Nothing they did seems unethical or immoral to me.
If people are willing to pay more for a ticket, good for them.
That would be at my local bar listening to.. uh I dunno.. Dire Straits on the jukebox..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I think I could spend 2 years in min security prison for 5-10 mil and be happy about it.
Still a pretty good idea they should open a franchise.
Prices are already screwed to hell for these events. I say good for them sorry they got caught.
If they were smart they would have lived in a different country.
I'm just curious but they had to have some serious start up money.
Were they using stolen CC#'s or did they just have countless credit cards?
You would think this would be pretty easy to track down the bank accounts that they use.
Collect who's paying for what and go from there.
Agreed. From where I sit, you have a group of guys that figured out a way to get the tickets first. It's not like they hacked anyone's servers and got tickets that they shouldn't have had access to. They bought them just like everyone else. How is this any different than getting all of your friends and family to hop on Ticketmaster the second tickets become available to increase your chances? Trust me, I know lots of people who do or have done this.
I just don't get what the big deal is here.
Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
It's no different than what guys like George Soros do...
How is this any different than Ticketmaster scooping up all the good seats and auctioning them off on their own?
The difference would be that these guys are using a botnet and cause what is in essence a denial of service attack. Ticketmaster, on the other hand, probably has a deal with the vendors; these guys do not.
Bush administration: Defends corporate interests and their "right" to lock down on a market for maximum profit at the expense of the consumer.
Obama administration: Defends corporate interests and their "right" to lock down on a market for maximum profit at the expense of the consumer.
Holy shit, that is a profound change. I understand know why the people on the extreme right are up in arms over all this socialism.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They didn't even get them first.
They just got a lot of them early in the period of public availability.
Captcha solving is not against the law.
Their problem was the other stunts they pulled. But it wouldn't be much of a slash dot story if we couldn't tie in some technical method.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Wait...
The events already had a monopoly on tickets.
The monopoly is a pre-existing fact, a built in shortage.
The BOUGHT the tickets, lots of them. Not ALL the tickets.
Just how do you equate this with a monopoly?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Actually really big money men like Soros pay top dollar to have the fastest connections into the systems that run the exchanges. They also have computer systems running what ever algorithm they think will make a money that day sitting on their side of those connections waiting to pounce. Ever try to get in on a hot IPO as retail investor? You can't, ever try to unload something during a major sell off and wonder why it takes hours when the trade to buy it took seconds (sure some of that might be there are no buyers but..)? Most of this is because you at the back of the line when it comes to placing orders and people like Soros are up front.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Language like "hacking" and "scalping" tend to hide the actual crime here.
The ticket purchase/sale is a contract, unlike some of the online transactions that people assume are contracts but are not. (There is a mutual agreement to terms, and consideration is exchanged for something of value.) The people who bought the tickets represented a fictitious identity while entering into a contract. This is a crime of fraud (not "hacking") and because of the electronic nature of the transaction and the intent, it constitute wire fraud.
What I'm wondering is what the threat was that persuaded them to plead guilty.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Your assumption is that if this is based on capitalism, there must be nothing wrong with it. I'm not exactly sure that's a good assumption. Take the recent credit derivatives debacle that threw our economy into a tailspin. Hey, Goldman Sachs and others created a product, people were willing to buy a product at a certain price. There's a risk element just like there is with any other security. That's capitalism, what's wrong with that? i think history demonstrates that, while based on capitalism, how unhealthy this activity was to our economy. As far as tickets go, let's say these tickets were priced at value that both the promoter and the artist agreed would be fair compensation. Their goal being to make some money for the work they produce while at the same time, setting the price in a range that allows a broad base of fans to enjoy. Scalpers come in, buy up the majority of the tickets and resell them at double the value. Sure, that's capitalism. But that act may have effectively shut out a large fan base that can't afford that new price. What's wrong with that? Well, from a market perspective, nothing (perhaps). It's supply and demand. But from a societal perspective, it starts to put a bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots. Entertainment/Sports/etc. becomes a industry that can be enjoyed only if you have a certain amount of wealth. In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base. It was the act of a third party that may have priced out a potential consumers.
Capitalism: The new religion of the 21st and 22nd century. Like all religions, dare ye not question it! For God is in the numbers. Everything has a price - everything must go! Sell your soul for a buck, you won't need where we're going. The only rule is that money rules all. Dig in, pig out, eat not your fill but everything you can take. Fuck your neighbours, what's yours is yours and what's theirs should be yours too! For the free market is divine and it commands that the only true virtue is greed. So pile on, like rats atop a sinking ship, for he who can reach the highest will eventually touch the sun, and be made supreme!
Welcome to paradise, don't mind the mess.
Someone stop the planet, I want off.
What's the difference between this and High Frequency Trading? In both cases you're using very fast computers to give you an edge over normal people in buying items that you will then sell a short time later for a higher price to people willing to buy them.
Goldman Sachs and others created a product, people were willing to buy a product at a certain price. There's a risk element just like there is with any other security. That's capitalism, what's wrong with that?
There is nothing wrong with that but those MBS and other derivatives were marketed as being less risky than lots of those guys knew they in fact were. There is nothing wrong with derivatives, the problem had to do with FRAUD up and down the line. People applying for loans gave fraudulent information to brokers, brokers fraudulently modified the applications farther or simply passed on the documents as vetted without doing it. Banks wrote the loans and then sold them to other banks fraudulently claiming their application processes were secure when they were knowingly doing nothing to verify what brokers will telling them. Those other banks lumped those loans into baskets of vary quality claiming that it was diversification and reduced risk. The trouble was because of all the FRAUD up and down the line many many more of the loans in those baskets of high quality mortgages were actually low quality. Knowing this they marketed the securities any way FRAUDULENTLY insisting they were safe. Then people bought insure on the investment which by this point many of these investors might not have know there were problems but many still did know and in those cases the FRAUDULENTLY characterized the risk the the insurer who went with it because they wanted to have the business to show their investors. The insurers probably knew what was going on as well but because of all the other FRAUD they were able to claim most of their exposure was only to high quality assets and push up their stock prices that way. Then because people had the insurance which was to affordable they used more leverage than they otherwise would buy more of the same FRAUD laden crap and repeated the process until it was unsustainable.
So the problem was not capitalism, but FRAUD and sadly none of the solutions actually involved prosecuting anyone from FRAUD.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's not like they hacked anyone's servers and got tickets that they shouldn't have had access to.
It sounds like that's exactly what they did in order to build a botnet to purchase the tickets for them.
I don't disagree with your points on fraud. The point is that people often mistaken or excuse fraud in the name of capitalism. That same fraudulent argument applies to ticket scalping as well. Ticketmaster (or whomever) set rules in place regarding the sale of tickets. These people FRAUDULENTLY misrepresented themselves by FRAUDULENTLY identifying themselves as individual purchasers. Then they resell these tickets at a FRAUDULENT value that is well and above the MSRP. Just because the market may bear that price doesn't make it legal or ethical. Hence the quote from the article "These defendants made money by combining age-old fraud with new-age computer hacking," the DoJ said in its press release.
It doesnt matter *how* they do it, the end result is the same. The artist wants $10/seat, but a fan ends up paying $50/seat because they have to go through a third party. Ticketmaster is just as bad as any scalper. This time they just got pissed because someone else beat them to it.
How is this any different than getting all of your friends and family to hop on Ticketmaster the second tickets become available to increase your chances?
1) Your family isn't doing it for profit.
2) You're not reselling the tickets at a markup, which is illegal.
3) You and your family hasn't paid up with the right politicians to get favorable protectionist laws written up for them.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
The 'botnet' these articles are talking about are their own dedicated servers, not virus infections like they are trying to imply. You don't need a botnet to crack captchas, you can use a server to queue up 1000's of captcha images and have third world workers solve them for a tenth of a cent. This entire case is basically just explaining someones business and then inserting and replacing words with ones that have bad connotations to get the public to think that they have solved a crime. Just replace the words 'computer network' with 'botnet', 'revenue' with 'ill-gotten gains', sending a web request with 'impersonating users', and throw in the words fraud, hacking, scheme, and bogus every other word and you can make anything look like organized crime.
As ohers have previously said, the problem here is that the tickets prices were not high enough (in a free market sense).
The solution would be to sell the tickets at the right price, that is, the price consumers are willing to pay.
I think a system like this would do the job
1. The day tickets go on sale, charge an outrageous amount (say, $100,000).
2. Then gradually decrease prices each day (or even every hour)
3. Last day the tickets would go on sale for $1
In that way, each person would decide which is the "right" price to pay. Do you *really* want to see this show? Would you risk missing it because you want to save a few bucks and wait until tomorrow? Do you think it would be a good deal to buy tickets now and resell them later for a profit? OK go ahead. How many tickets? At which price? Are you sure you will be able to sell them, considering that people willing to pay a higher price already had the opportunity to do so and refused?
So if you sign up for gmail and say that you are from Beverly Hills 90210 and your name is Darth Vader then you should be convicted and go to jail for committing fraud against Google because you are using an assumed name?
"In order to access certain Services, you may be required to provide information about yourself (such as identification or contact details) as part of the registration process for the Service, or as part of your continued use of the Services. You agree that any registration information you give to Google will always be accurate, correct and up to date."
That is merely a civil matter. Why are there criminal charges involved here? After all, they did not defraud ticketmaster, they PAID for the tickets.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This is wrong, I have not found any evidence that they hacked computers or used browser exploits to infect PCs or anything of that nature. Everything I have found says that they used computer servers rented at datacenters and then networked them together sort of like any other internet business does. When a media story talks about someone "hacking" a bank the slashdot crowd gets upset because the media is portraying a term that to them is supposed to mean clever programming tricks, linux, tinkering, etc. When its the other way around and the media is describing a datacenter as a botnet, which is technically true, the crowd goes with it and assumes that something evil is going on.
You're the only one who used the words "rights". I never stated such at thing. The argument is not around entitlements, but your selective quoting missed that. Let me fill in the missing piece of the entire quote: "In the long run, that may not be beneficial to that industry as the fan base drops. Keep in mind that the industry itself had set a price in order to maintain/increase fan base." The artists/producers who are more knowledgeable about what price will sustain a certain consumer market set a price. Artificially increasing this price may be a detriment to that industry itself since it may drive consumer demand down for that product -- and I don't mean for just that single concert; that's a very short sighted perspective on business. This is about maintaining an equilibrium in the supply/demand of the industry, not inherent rights.
1. If event ticket sales are intended to sell tickets to those who actually intend to attend the event, then resales are contrary to the intent of the initial sale.
2. If event ticket sales are intended to provide the maximum revenue (or as close to it as can be in an uncertain market) to the initial seller, then resales should be conducted by the original seller, or the original seller should benefit by sharing a portion of the proceeds of resales.
3. If resales exist only to enrich scalpers (arbitrageurs by a more elegant word), then these scalpers add no value to the original seller.
4. When event tickets are available in a finite quanitity, there will most likely be more demand than supply.
5. In view of limited supply, there will always be some who want to attend the event, but will be unable to obtain tickets.
6. Online ticket sales are impossible to control to prevent arbitrage.
My point is that it is patently unfair to those of us who want to attend an event, but are unable to purchase tickets when the sales are only online, due to the maipulation of the market by automated arbitraguers. And these arbitrageurs (scalpers) add no value to the event organizers, promoters, performers, or exhibitors, but only increase costs for purchasers. In effect, they take what should have been additional revenue from the original seller, who either chose to accept a lower price or misjudged the market. Unfair? Actually, my complaint is that it's nearly impossible to buy a ticket to a concert unless you camp on the seller and hope you aren't just a moment off. Or got behind the bots who owned the site.
So, how to fix this?
Maybe put the purchaser's name on tickets, and require identification. Among other things, well, actually, counterfeit tickets are sometimes a problem also, who knows. But, bottom line is whether or not this a problem.
So is this a problem that needs to be solved? I say yes.
Another much better solution - auction off tickets. Yes, this will make tickets cost a LOT more, but it seems that there are people ready to pay more than the face value, so try driving out the scalpers by upping the price to what the market WILL bear, essentially pricing them out of the market. And then of course the buyers will be paying the scalper price right up front. Or will they?
Problem is, this doesn't really solve my problem. I won't be paying scalper prices for bad seats, and so I'm out again.
Actually, the problem is simply one of supply and demand. So I'll always just be hoping I got in line early enough to buy tickets. Alas, I may never get a ticket to a concert, just my dumb luck. Unless I buy scalped tickets early when they are a little cheaper (unlikely) or get lucky.
No fixing this. Screw it. Let the scalpers hose us. I bet some of them conspire with promoters and the 'legitimate' sellers anyways. Ticketmaster in particular is happy to screw us any way they can. All the rest ditto.
So there's no solution. Damn.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
You obviously don't give a fuck about music. If you did, you'd be pretty pissed off by people who deprived you of a chance to see your favorite band live in order to make a quick buck. There is a reason why even the big ticket vendors put barriers in place to prevent this sort of behaviour.
If your idea of a free market is "burn all the competition's first aid kits if there is a hurricane, and sell your own at a premium", this is pretty much it. If you're a scalper: FUCK YOU
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
as long as the opportunity for profit exists, then there will be capitalists ready to take advantage of it. It doesn't really matter how strongly you make your anti-capitalist arguments, the reality of this will still be there.
What's happening here is something like this: You bring along enormous tankers, and you empty all the ground tanks in every gas station. Then you sell gas from your tankers at a premium right outside the gas station. You've provided nothing of value, but you create an artificial scarcity in order to skim money off of other's work. Additionally you deprive people of the possibility to see a band live at the price which the band and venue agreed would be reasonable. This is very much a scam, in fact it is illegal where I live (fortunately I don't live in the land of the free and the brave). Also, to all scalpers, let me give you a heartfelt FUCK YOU.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Exactly. Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
If the true market value is higher than the face value, then I think the right of first sale should apply. I should be able to buy something for $X, and sell it for $2X if the market will support it.
They weren't interested in paying more than other players, they were interested in hijacking access.. The free market model of capitalism requires all players to have equal information and access. In the real world this rarely happens because a few players will have some small to medium advantage over another player but that's just because information and access can't be perfectly distributed at the same time to all players. These guys registering thousands of placeholder domains and shell companies were artificially creating an INSANELY HUGE advantage for themselves and did not even vaguely represent a free market capitalism operation.
...by all the "legal" scalpers that control the market, Ticketmaster, Live Nation, etc. Great acts in small clubs where you can pay directly are where it's at.
Why? Why is what the market will support the moral arbiter?
Setting that aside, there's a reason tickets like those are priced lower than what the venue could get for them. It's to create shortage.
You're wrong. The band and venue wants primarily as much people they can get attending, secondarily as much money as they can get (I work closely with people in the business). The scum from the article is skimming off the good work of the artist and the fans, this is in fact illegal where I live. Their goal is to create an artificial scarcity of tickets and sell theirs at a premium, thus fucking over the fans of the band. It has nothing to do with a free market. If you're a ticket scalper: FUCK YOU!
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
The price is based on fraudulent pretenses. If a show is sold out because of scalpers fraudulently acquiring tickets, the only realistic option a fan has to see the show is to pay a price that has been inflated because of that fraudulent activity.
This isn't simply a matter of price speculation, it's market manipulation done in bad faith.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
And yet people still pay the higher price. Scalping nets out to be third-party market optimization, even if the whole process is illegal or at best unethical.
Fair? Of course not. But nobody forced you to open your wallet either - seeing a concert or a game isn't a life or death situation. If this happened with something life-sustaining, then real problems arise.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?