A cybersecurity researcher revealed this week that Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence assisted him in discovering a flaw that could have allowed anyone with the exploit to issue free tickets to almost every major U.S. music festival and access sensitive customer information.
WIRED detailed that Ian Carroll said he used Claude Opus 4.7 to help identify and exploit a security weakness in Front Gate Tickets, the Live Nation-owned ticketing platform that manages admissions for many of the country’s largest festivals, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, South by Southwest, Austin City Limits and dozens of others.
According to Carroll, the vulnerability ultimately granted him super-administrator privileges within Front Gate’s systems, allowing him to create complimentary tickets of any type, including high-priced VIP and backstage passes that normally sell for thousands of dollars. He told the outlet that he intentionally stopped short of completing any fraudulent transactions and instead disclosed the vulnerability responsibly to the company.
Front Gate said the issue was resolved within 24 hours, and that they confirmed “there is no evidence of exploitation, ticket impact, or compromise of customer information,” thanking Carroll for his efforts. They called him “a responsible security researcher who used AI-assisted tools to bypass standard firewall security controls and access an internal API used by entry scanners at festival venues—not a consumer-facing system or public login portal.”
Carroll disputes some of those conclusions, arguing that the vulnerability may have existed long before he discovered it and that there is no way to definitively prove it had never been exploited by someone else. He also maintains that he successfully reached highly privileged administrative functions through a publicly accessible login system.
What made the case particularly notable was Claude’s role in the attack. Carroll said he initially discovered what appeared to be a standard SQL injection vulnerability but encountered a web application firewall that blocked his attempts to exploit it. Rather than manually developing a workaround, he asked Claude Opus 4.7 for assistance.
According to Carroll, the AI independently generated a bypass technique using nested SQL queries that successfully evaded the firewall. It then produced scripts that exposed customer databases and eventually enabled him to escalate privileges by taking over an administrator account through password reset mechanisms. He added that “I think there’s a very good chance it could have found this exploit end-to-end without me doing anything at all.”
Carroll told WIRED he had to study Claude’s output afterward because he did not initially understand the technique the AI had generated. The researcher estimated the vulnerability could have exposed millions of customer records, including names, email addresses, and mailing addresses, though not payment card information. He also said employee records were accessible, making it possible to hijack privileged accounts and administer ticket inventories.
However, Front Gate responded that any unauthorized changes to a staff account or illegitimate tickets would have been detected quickly, and that their network detected Carroll’s breach before he reported it to them. The company also doubted that the tickets would have been usable in person as “many high-value and VIP tickets” require RFID wrist bands that can’t be generated online.
Anthropic emphasized that Carroll was participating in its Cyber Verification Program, which makes “advanced security capabilities available to defenders so they can conduct exactly this sort of research that helps make the world’s code safer.”
The company said that outside the program, attempts to use Claude for offensive hacking activities are designed to be detected and blocked. Anthropic said the program exists specifically to help researchers identify vulnerabilities before malicious actors do.
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