4 charged with hacking into concert ticket sites

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

Never mind the economic terrorists on Wall Street, or the folks who
perpetrate identity theft. Go after the guys who automate legitimate
online purchases and charge them with wire fraud. Absolutely amazing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35652646

"Four California men were charged on Monday with using sophisticated
computer programs to fraudulently obtain more than a million tickets
to concerts and sporting events and reselling them for a profit  ...
According to the indictment, the defendants worked with computer
programmers in Bulgaria to create a computer network that was able to
fool mechanisms that ticket sites have in place to make would-be
buyers prove they are humans. Such mechanisms, known as CAPTCHA,
involve making the buyers type random words or characters shown on
their screen before proceeding to purchase tickets. ... [by] having
employees and agents create databases of answers ahead of time by
manually going through tens of thousands of CAPTCHA challenges."
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