The Botnet Threat

A superpower of the online ticket world has been somewhat violently exploited in late 2012 by an interesting piece of devious software. We call it devious as it is still questionable whether this type mass buying/ exploitation is illegal.

The largest company targeted was, and most likely still is Ticketmaster, and they are not getting off lightly. The program called "Botnet" is designed to read Captcha codes. And they have taken a large scalp as the whole purpose of a Capthcha code is to differentiate between a computer and a human purchasing a ticket. However Botnet does not only pose a threat to ticket software companies, have a look here to see the Zombie Army Botnet threat to other prolific platforms.

Three men from California were arrested at the end of 2012 for allegedly commissioning a group of Bulgarian hackers to write the Captcha reading program.

This program is the latest play in a cat & mouse game between hackers and E-commerce anti fraud teams. Perhaps this new development may spell the end of Captcha as we know it. And sure enough a new style of Captcha code has been developed. It is called NuCaptcha. No points for originality there, however NuCaptcha heralds a simple alternative to its now easily exploited cousin.

Opposed to to traditional use of a still feature, NuCaptcha will be a short marketing video with a not so secret message, we're not talking about subliminal messages, which have been proved ineffective. In brief, Proffessor Participant's passing prose is that; this will undoubtedly keep the hackers at bay for at least a few weeks, if not longer.

The question which may now be burning your lips is "But what has Prof Participant done in the battle against the bots?"

Well, firstly, we have secured a very reputable payment service provider and merchant provider, this will mean that your revenue is guaranteed to be safe through many mechanisms we have implemented  The most integral mechanism would be our use of HTTPS.

HTTPS effectively means that no person or computer can track your payments once it has been made. As it is a secure payment gateway, all information is terminated once the portal is closed. This ensures that all your (and our) private information is cached and is therefor inaccessible to any third parties.

Have you got any thoughts on how to improve security for event websites and ticket selling systems, feel free to post a comment, tweet us or send an e-mail, we love talking tech and especially future technology options with our friends and clients. And if Ticketmaster are reading, dump the Captcha code guys, surely it's crippling you?

Thank you for reading,

Kind Regards,

Prof P.