Cracking Down on 'Scalpers': A Battle for Fairness in the Ticketing Market

In order to maintain the fairness and order of the ticketing market, recently, the Ministry of Public Security has specially deployed public security organs across the country to carry out a one-year special campaign to combat and rectify illegal and criminal activities of scalpers reselling tickets. It aims to severely crack down on a number of professional scalper illegal and criminal gangs that resell tickets, deeply punish a number of illegal and criminal gangs that use online "plug-in" software to grab tickets, resolutely cut off the interest chain of scalpers reselling tickets through internal and external collusion, and effectively rectify a number of illegal and unregulated online ticket reselling platforms.

The Ministry of Public Security emphasizes combining technology and management, crackdown and education, giving full play to the role of big data technology empowerment, realizing full-chain prevention and governance of ticket issuance, circulation, inspection, and after-sales rights protection, promoting long-term and effective governance, and resolutely putting an end to the chaos of scalper reselling tickets.

Facing the new trend of scalpers using technical means to grab tickets, Zhang Yongbo, the person in charge of the product center of Knownsec, said that enhancing technical prevention capabilities, continuously optimizing the reservation ticketing system, and further upgrading the protection system are key measures to ensure the fairness and security of the ticketing system. He emphasized that only by using technical means to deal with "technical scalpers" and timely filling technical loopholes can scalper reselling behavior be effectively curbed.

Revealing the four major characteristics of scalper software: How do they always succeed in seizing scarce resources?

In the context of the Internet era, scalper activities are becoming increasingly professional. They frequently use technical means to seize scarce tickets, appointment sources, and limited-time offer products, etc., often leaving consumers in a dilemma of "hard to get a ticket (appointment)", and ultimately having to endure price hikes and purchase what they need from scalpers.

This behavior not only violates consumers' fair rights to purchase tickets but also seriously disrupts the market order and price system. For enterprises and event organizers, the large-scale ticket-grabbing behavior of scalpers not only brings a heavy burden of malicious traffic operation but also often makes them bear accusations of ineffective management or tacitly allowing scalpers, thereby triggering a brand trust crisis and triggering a wave of negative public opinion, causing incalculable damage to the long-term reputation and customer relationships of enterprises and event organizers.

So, why can scalpers always be one step ahead in the rush for scarce resources? The key lies in deeply understanding the technical means and operation mechanism behind scalper software so as to find effective countermeasures.

Zhang Yongbo said that the reason why scalper software can always succeed lies mainly in its four significant characteristics and capabilities: first, it has the ability to grab tickets instantly and on a large scale, and can quickly seize resources once tickets are released; second, it has a massive database of ID numbers, and can achieve comprehensive coverage of ticket grabbing even in the face of real-name ticket purchase requirements.

Third, it can perform simultaneous ticket refund and purchase operations. Through large-scale order placement strategies, scalper software can quickly purchase new tickets while refunding, thereby forcibly occupying system resources; fourth, it has the ability to crack verification codes. No matter how complex the verification code is, the massive code-breaking platforms behind scalper software can quickly decode it.

Confronting technical "scalpers": New technical means build a defensive wall.

The new characteristics shown by ticket-grabbing software pose new challenges to cracking down on scalpers and also require the use of technology to deal with technology.

At present, some well-known scenic spot ticketing systems have already put this into practice. For example, the Palace Museum in Beijing currently uses real-time identification of scalpers' in-depth defense technology, which can identify risks of reserved users at the "millisecond level"; the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan has directly blacklisted multiple abnormal ticket purchase accounts found during the operation of the defense system and routine inspections.

Judging from the results, timely upgrading defense technology and using information-based means to block and intercept can effectively cut off the "black hands" of scalpers. For example, according to the interception data of the Palace Museum in nearly half a month during the summer vacation, the Palace Museum ticketing reservation platform has received a total of more than 30 million requests, with an average of more than 2.5 million requests per day. Among them, more than 80% of malicious machine-brushed traffic is identified, effectively cracking down on scalpers' machine-brushed behavior.

Zhang Yongbo said that in the face of the increasingly severe problem of scalpers reselling tickets, enterprises need to use new technologies and new methods to protect their own interests and the rights and interests of consumers. For the characteristics of the above-mentioned scalper ticket-grabbing software, Knownsec's scalper shield product can effectively identify and deal with them. The scalper shield can realize real-time blocking by using advanced identification technology to accurately capture the characteristics of online scalper crawlers. It uses intelligent speed-limiting technology to dynamically adjust the access frequency of ticket-grabbing interfaces according to business characteristics to reduce performance consumption and block high-frequency requests.

It is understood that the scalper shield has been widely used in scenarios such as limited-time offer product snapping up, ticket purchasing, service reservation, and hospital registration. It has been connected to hundreds of trading and ticketing systems, including the Tiananmen Rostrum reservation system, the Beijing unified registration platform, the China Eastern Airlines ticket purchasing system, and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.