Presented at
Summercon 2023,
July 15, 2023, noon
(30 minutes)
Do you have any beef with online merchants? Maybe you weren’t able to buy a PS5 for months after they were released. Maybe there teardrops on your guitar because Ticketmaster didn’t let you get tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Or maybe you will be too far apart from the Cure because of the latest ticket scandal leaving you empty handed! The common denominator to consumer stress in online sales is directly tied to the uptick in botnets and the scalpers that use them.
Rebecca and Christine are going to shed light on the underground world of online resellers (scalpers) and the botnets they use to gain a competitive advantage when buying merchandise, such as sneakers, concert tickets, GPUs, and even NFTs, edging out legitimate consumers and profiting from the sales of products they didn’t design and music they didn’t create.
This talk will explain what botnets are, how scalpers build them and use them, and then recap some real world examples of botnets being seen in the wild. First we will talk about a cyber attack that no one even knew happened against the Shopify platform, when a scalper botnet broke a popular makeup website during the Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star Conspiracy makeup collection release. No, they didn’t break the internet, a botnet did. Next, Rebecca and Christine will evaluate the veracity of claims that Ticketmaster made in their Senate committee hearing, blaming their ticketing fiascos on “botnet attacks”, and ask the question, “Was the botnet truly scalpers or a just a convenient scapegoat?”
Presenters:
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Christine Fossaceca
Christine Fossaceca is an iOS reverse engineer and cybersecurity podcaster, co-creator of HerHax Podcast. She has worked in infosec for 7 years. Christine has the unique interests in both cybersecurity and pop culture to be able to speak to the impact of botnets on consumers.
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