Hackers Caught Cheating the Burning Man Ticketing System

In the past few years Burning Man has transformed from the mysterious and outcast desert festival attended by an incredibly loyal group of followers, to a pop culture reference that is now attended by celebrities and CEOs as a place to be seen like at Coachella. As a result of the festival's rise in popularity, tickets have become a hot commodity and with its "first come, first serve" policy, that leaves many fans in the dark looking for passes. Some Silicon Valley engineers found a way around the system through a hole in the ticketing service, Ticketfly, and put themselves first in line.

Rumors have circulated for years about the vulnerability of Burning Man's ticketing system. This year it became apparent that there was fraud and festvival officials have taken steps to crack down on those who might have cheated the system.

"Approximately 200 people created a technical 'backdoor' to the sale and made their way to the front of the line," according to the statement via Wired. "Absolutely no tickets were sold before the sale opened, but they were able to purchase the first batch of tickets when the sale started."

Web developers and engineers in the Burning Man Reddit thread speculated that the backdoor was created through a few lines of code that allowed the hackers to generate the waiting room URL ahead of the noon on sale time.

The festival sold 40,000 tickets in under an hour, but officials are canceling the fraudulent orders and taking steps to prevent anything like this from happening in the future.

"The good news (for us, not them) is that we can track them down, and we're going to cancel their orders," says Megan K. Miller, Burning Man's director of communications to Wired. "Steps are being taken to prevent this from happening again in future sales."

It is understandable why they might want to cheat to get in this year with a Boeing 747 as one of the announced installations.