A crucial unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability in Entrance Gate Tickets (FGT), a Dwell Nation/Ticketmaster subsidiary that powers ticketing for main US festivals together with EDC, Bonnaroo, and Outdoors Lands, allowed full administrative takeover of the platform with assist from Anthropic’s Claude AI mannequin.
The researcher Ian Carroll seen that almost each main US pageant funneled ticketing by means of the identical handful of ageing FGT domains. Whereas fuzzing the fgtapi.frontgatetickets.com API with the instrument ffuf, they discovered that any endpoint path containing the phrase “gadget” triggered a definite error requiring a deviceUID parameter, exposing unauthenticated middleware tied to on-site scanner and box-office {hardware}.
Testing revealed {that a} deviceUID worth of 12345 succeeded, however appending a single quote precipitated the request to hold, indicating the parameter was concatenated immediately right into a uncooked SQL question with out sanitization.
Bypassing the WAF With Claude
Though the endpoint sat behind an AWS Internet Software Firewall, typical instruments like sqlmap failed to achieve traction. The researcher then handed the issue to Claude Code working the Opus mannequin, which found that the WAF solely inspected the outer layer of enter, which means injection payloads nested inside a derived subquery slipped by means of undetected.
As a result of the endpoint returned no direct question output, Claude engineered a boolean-based blind SQL injection utilizing a MySQL quirk the place a string like 'x' added to a quantity coerces to zero.
By crafting payloads corresponding to deviceUID = x'+(SELECT CASE WHEN , the response toggled between two actual gadget names (“MC70-023” for true, “Intellitix Add” for false), making a dependable oracle for extracting knowledge one bit at a time.
The underlying fgs database contained greater than 500 tables, together with workers credentials, buyer data, and reside authentication tokens.
| Desk | Delicate fields uncovered |
|---|---|
| FGS_USER | E mail, passcode, passcode2, permissions JSON |
| PERSON | E mail, passcode, reset token |
| RESET_TOKEN / API_TOKEN | Dwell, redeemable session and OAuth tokens |
By studying a reside entry from the RESET_TOKEN desk after triggering a password reset, the researcher hijacked an administrator account with out ever realizing its password, gaining full write entry to each pageant on the platform, together with stock, pricing, and checkout methods.
With administrator entry, an attacker may challenge limitless free “comp” tickets to any pageant, search buyer order databases at will (a take a look at seek for “chris” returned 1000’s of data), and browse or redeem password reset tokens to hijack workers and buyer accounts platform-wide.
The researcher stopped short of exfiltrating bulk knowledge, stating the purpose was confirmed as soon as EDC- and Bonnaroo-level administrative management was achieved from a single unauthenticated GET request.
Notably, Entrance Gate Tickets and Dwell Nation had no publicly listed safety contact, forcing the researcher to guess a sound disclosure e mail. The seller reportedly mounted the flaw shortly and indicated a bug bounty program is forthcoming.
This case underscores a rising development of AI-assisted vulnerability research, the place giant language fashions like Claude can autonomously reverse-engineer WAF logic and assemble multi-stage blind injection exploits with minimal human steering, a sample additionally seen in Anthropic’s personal disclosure of AI-orchestrated assaults and impartial assessments exhibiting AI brokers exploiting SQL injection flaws with out specific hacking directions.
Legacy ticketing infrastructure dealing with each shopper gross sales and bodily box-office operations stays a sexy goal given the dimensions of non-public and monetary knowledge concerned.
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