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Hackers Using Bots, Scripts To Lock Down Restaurant Reservations

Posted by Unknown on from the flaws-in-the-system dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Forget about hacking an app or database: for a small cadre of hackers in San Francisco, it's all about writing code that can score them a great table at a hot restaurant. According to the BBC, these developers and programmers have designed bots that scan restaurant Websites for open tables and reserve them. Diogo Mónica, a security engineer with e-commerce firm Square, is one of those programmers. A self-described foodie, he decided to get around his inability to score a table at the ultra-popular State Bird Provisions by writing a script that sent out an email every time the restaurant's reservation page changed. 'Once a reservation got canceled I would get an email and could quickly get it for myself,' he wrote in a blog posting. But soon he noticed something peculiar: 'As soon as reservations became available on the website (at 4am), all the good times were immediately taken and were gone by 4:01am.' He suspected it was automated 'reservation bots at work,' built by other programmers with a hankering for fine cuisine. 'After a while even cancellations started being taken immediately from under me,' he wrote. 'It started being common receiving an email alerting of a change, seeing an available time, and it being gone by the time the website loaded.' His solution was to build his own reservation bot, using Ruby, and post the code in the wild."

15 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Or... by nitehawk214 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Go to a casual local place and have a backup plan if it is busy. Restaurants with mile-long reservation lists and >$100 plates are almost universally overrated.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    1. Re:Or... by war4peace · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's the "Ode to my Stomach" syndrome.
      Personally, I found home made food much more rewarding. At least I know for sure what do I put in my mouth. No funny business.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re:Or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The State Bird place mentioned does not have particularly high prices. The current menu only has two items in the $20 range ($20 and $22). With prices like those -- and assuming good food -- who wouldn't want to eat there?

      dom

    3. Re:Or... by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another option: have dining in parties with your friends. Have each person take a rotation, try out new recipes/variants, and in general, have a good time without the bad music/bad lighting/bad seating. Non-paying guests can stay and wash the dishes ;)

      I remember seeing something about these in my parents magazines from the 1950s. People had some place in the house call a Dining Room and it was much larger than their computer den. Shocking!

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. There must be something better to do with that by stewsters · · Score: 3, Insightful

    God damn hipsters.

    1. Re:There must be something better to do with that by Natales · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Come on dude! It's so easy to be dismissive when you don't have a clue what are you talking about. Let me break your bubble: there are geeks that are hipsters, foodies and that just love the hedonistic pleasures of life. We all converge in this site at some point and share things that matter to all of us, but this is by no means all we are in life.

      I've had to learn to appreciate our differences with fellow geeks and nerds that have completely opposite political views for example without demonizing them, and in the process I've learned a thing or two. Don't fall in the "us" and "them" rhetoric and learn to respect people that care about different things.

  3. I guess they never heard of CAPTCHA by Dorianny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These days you can't even post on a forum without going through some form of CAPTCH,A never mind trying to buy tickets or book reservations.

    1. Re:I guess they never heard of CAPTCHA by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, but modern CAPTCHAs are so convoluted that computers can solve them more easily than I can.

  4. This isn't hacking by hypergreatthing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is just a html scraper. People have had the same thing going on ebay for years. Suddenly it's hacking? Give me a break.

    1. Re:This isn't hacking by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nowadays using a computer

      Using an HTML scraper and an almost certainly unholy bunch of scripts to make sure you get first dibs on a restaurant reservation is certainly hacking in the old sense of the word: it's a hack.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  5. Re:On the other hand by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    all bunch of blabla bla.

    you know what would work out? if the tables are really all reserved all the fucking time, make a reservation cost.
    then increase cost until you hit a spot. the restaurant should just charge more, if people want to pay a months rent to eat there then so be it.

    btw how the fuck could they make sure they don't get duplicate reservations? checking id's of people coming in to match the reservation? they can't really rely on cookies, ip addresses or anything like that for it. not even fb profile linking would do it, easy enough to have fake profiles...

    what urbanspoon cares about is that the tables are full, nothing else.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  6. Abusing the system by Torodung · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is abuse of the reservation system, plain and simple. It simply is not robust enough (too informal) to handle bots. I suspect it soon will become commonplace to require tortuous captchas for reservations. Great job, lazy hacktivists! You've ruined e-life for everyone.

    As for posting code for it in the wild so any script kiddy can do it. Good for you. That's called leveling the playing field. It's the proliferation of bots just to be shits to each other that rankles my ire, not the fact that everyone can now do it.

  7. Re:Reservation fees? by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    some place in NYC that cost $600 for dinner for two people after taxes, tip and whatever. i tried making reservations, but the place was booked solid for months in advance

    Face facts. The problem wasn't that the restaurant was booked, the problem was that you are not famous.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  8. Re:This is why we can't have nice things by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Meh, life is like that. I have to lock my bike up, my house has an alarm, that old lady got into the 12 items or less line with double that, some fuckers knocked down some buildings with airplanes, and people STILL don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  9. Re:On the other hand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you know what would work out? if the tables are really all reserved all the fucking time, make a reservation cost.
    then increase cost until you hit a spot. the restaurant should just charge more, if people want to pay a months rent to eat there then so be it.

    That works if you're just in it to make a profit, and don't care about who is able to come to the restaurant.

    Planet Money had a podcast about this in regard to concert tickets. They had Kid Rock talking about it, and pointed out that it would be super simple to keep jacking up the price until supply & demand balances out and it's no longer worth scalping tickets.

    However, selling tickets to the highest bidder greatly changes the tone of the audience you get. You no longer get people who are there because they want to enjoy the experience, you instead you get people there just to show off their affluence. (Kid Rock mentioned the bored-looking old guys in the front row who are obviously just there to impress half-their-age girlfriends.) You'd see that with increasing the price to restaurant reservations. You'll no longer get people going to the restaurant because they want to enjoy the food, you'd get people there because a table at State Bird Provisions is rare, and it will impress a girlfriend/business associate. As a chef, cooking for people who want to enjoy your food and cooking for people who are just there to show off are greatly different things, and you may be willing to reduce your profit if you can ensure the former.