Do you remember those numbers that you enter for verification while signing up for a new yahoo account? Yes, we are talking about a CAPTCHA (pronounced /ˈkæptʃə/) which is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.

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While Captcha ensures security of critical data on the internet, 4 notorious miscreants from California had other ideas. The culprits who were identified as Kenneth Lowson, 40; Kristofer Kirsch, 37; and Joel Stevenson, 37, Faisal Nahdi, 36, were charged in the indictment.

What they did ?

These men who worked for Wiseguy Ticket Inc. hacked into the system of popular ticket sellers such as Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, MLB.com and MusicToday. They bought and resold over 1.5 million tickets to brokers in the New Jersey area. The equivalent value of fraud is estimated at $25 million.  These were tickets of popular shows including Bruce Springsteen and Kenny Chesney concerts, also included were 2007 Major League Baseball playoff games at Yankee Stadium and Broadway productions of Wicked and The Producers.

How they did it ?

To provide un-biased access of tickets to popular events, the vendors such as Ticketmaster have put a limitations on the number of tickets that can be bought by an individual or a company. To execute this concept, online vendors have set up necessary software to which detects and prevents automated systems from dispensing bulk tickets in one go.

According to the government the employees at Wiseguy also worked with computer programmers in Bulgaria and developed a network of strong desktops which could be used to impersonate human beings. Evenutllay this lead to bombardment of tickets at the vendor’s place. Apparently, the culprits also had access to fake domain accounts & passworrds.

The Wiseguy team earned profited from the scheme by selling the tickets at a markup to the by charging its ticket brokers a percentage mark-up over the face value.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said the tickets cost consumers an average of $30 a piece, with some premium seats going for more than $1,000, before they were turned over to a regular ticket broker at inflated prices. He also said, ‘Today’s indictment represents a significant step forward in the fight against those who use fraud to disrupt e-commerce and evade computer security’.

Infact this is not the first case were these guys have been caught. The charges also cites references to 42 additional counts of wire fraud; where unauthorized access to computer system has been gained resulting in damage to computers in the local commerce.

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