Researcher Used Claude to Find Front Gate Tickets Bug That Could Have Issued Free Festival Tickets

A security researcher found an unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability in Front Gate Tickets that could have allowed an attacker to take over festival ticketing systems and issue complimentary tickets for major US music festivals.

The flaw was disclosed by Ian Carroll, who said the bug affected a public device API used by Front Gate Tickets infrastructure. Front Gate Tickets handles ticketing for large festival events, including EDC, Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, and others.

The case gained wider attention because Carroll used Anthropic’s Claude Code running Opus to help build the exploit path after a web application firewall blocked more direct SQL injection attempts, according to a WIRED report.

Front Gate Tickets Bug Exposed Admin Access Risk

Front Gate Tickets is a festival ticketing provider whose own website says it focuses on the festival ticketing experience for promoters and fans. The company operates in a market where ticketing systems handle payments, event access, box office operations, customer records, and on-site scanning workflows.

Carroll said he noticed that many festival sites routed ticketing through a small group of Front Gate domains. While testing the fgtapi.frontgatetickets.com API, he found that any path containing the word device triggered a special response asking for a deviceUID parameter.

That deviceUID parameter became the entry point. A normal value returned a response, but adding a quote caused the request to hang, which suggested that user input was being placed directly into a database query.

Issue	Details
Vulnerability type	Unauthenticated SQL injection
Affected area	Front Gate Tickets device API
Potential impact	Database access, password reset token abuse, administrator takeover
AI tool used	Claude Code running Opus
Disclosure date	Publicly disclosed on July 1, 2026

Claude Helped Bypass the WAF

The API sat behind AWS WAF, and Carroll said standard tooling did not make progress at first. He then gave the problem to Claude Code, which helped identify a way to nest SQL constructs inside a derived subquery.

The exploit did not return direct database output. Instead, it used a boolean-based blind SQL injection technique. The response changed between two real device names depending on whether a tested condition was true or false.

Carroll said this made it possible to read sensitive database values one bit at a time. His write-up said the fgs database had more than 500 tables, including customer records, ticketing data, staff credentials, and live tokens.

Password Reset Tokens Created the Takeover Path

The most serious finding involved password reset tokens. Carroll said he triggered a password reset, read a valid token from the RESET_TOKEN table through the SQL injection, and used it to take over a Front Gate Tickets administrator account.

That account reportedly had write access across every festival on the platform. From there, Carroll said he could access event inventory, pricing, checkout functions, customer search features, and complimentary ticket issuance.

The Front Gate Tickets business sits inside Ticketmaster’s wider portfolio. Live Nation’s Ticketmaster page lists Front Gate Tickets among its ticketing brands, alongside TicketWeb, Universe, IOMEDIA, and Elevate.

• An attacker could have searched customer and order data.
• An attacker could have accessed staff-related records.
• An attacker could have read and redeemed password reset tokens.
• An attacker could have attempted to issue complimentary tickets.
• An attacker could have affected multiple festivals from one admin account.

Researcher Says He Stopped Before Issuing Tickets

The headline risk was free tickets, but Carroll said he stopped before completing an order. He reportedly added high-value tickets to a cart to prove impact, but did not issue them because that could cross a legal line.

The WIRED report said Front Gate argued that safeguards limited personal information exposure, that fraudulent ticket issuance would have created an audit trail, and that improper tickets would have been detected and canceled.

Carroll disputed parts of that assessment, saying he gained super-administrator access through a public-facing route. He also said Front Gate did not claim to have evidence that the vulnerability had never been exploited before.

Why the Live Nation and Ticketmaster Link Matters

Front Gate Tickets became part of Ticketmaster’s festival ticketing business after a 2015 acquisition. Live Nation said at the time that the acquisition would expand its services in the festival and DIY event markets.

That scale is why the bug matters. A single weakness in ticketing infrastructure can affect many events, customers, promoters, staff accounts, and back-office workflows at once.

Ticketmaster’s official Live Nation page says its portfolio includes Front Gate Tickets. That makes the incident relevant not only to festival fans, but also to promoters and venue operators that depend on centralized ticketing platforms.

AI-Assisted Security Research Is Moving Fast

The incident also shows how quickly AI-assisted vulnerability research is changing. Carroll said Claude helped find the WAF bypass and write much of the exploit chain after he supplied the target behavior.

Anthropic has been adding cyber safeguards to its most capable Claude models. Its support page says real-time cyber safeguards are designed to detect and block requests that may indicate prohibited or high-risk cybersecurity use.

According to WIRED, Anthropic said Carroll was part of its Cyber Verification Program, which allows approved security researchers to use advanced security capabilities for defensive work. The company said similar activity outside that program would have been detected and blocked.

Disclosure and Fix Timeline

Carroll said he reported the issue to Front Gate Tickets and Live Nation on April 25, 2026. He said the vendor acknowledged the report the same day and confirmed the issue had been resolved on April 26, 2026.

The public disclosure came on July 1, 2026, through Carroll’s write-up. He also said the companies did not have an obvious public security contact, forcing him to guess a valid disclosure email.

For companies running ticketing, event, or payment infrastructure, the lesson is clear. Public-facing APIs, legacy device endpoints, password reset tables, and administrator panels need regular testing from both human researchers and modern automated tools.

What Ticketing Platforms Should Review

Ticketing companies should audit public APIs for unauthenticated behavior, test WAF rules against nested SQL patterns, and make sure password reset tokens cannot create a full account takeover path.

They should also require multi-factor authentication for privileged admin accounts. Carroll said administrator access was possible without a second verification layer after the reset token takeover.

The rise of AI-assisted testing means older assumptions no longer hold. If one researcher can quickly combine manual testing with an advanced coding model, attackers may try the same approach against other exposed event platforms.

What Users Should Know

There is no public evidence from the available reports that Carroll issued tickets, stole bulk customer data, or used the bug for personal gain. The known disclosure describes a security research case that the vendor reportedly fixed quickly.

Festival customers should still treat ticketing accounts as sensitive. They should use unique passwords, watch for suspicious password reset emails, and avoid reusing credentials across ticketing, email, and payment accounts.

For promoters and event operators, the bigger concern is platform concentration. When many festivals depend on the same ticketing backend, one vulnerability can create a much wider blast radius.

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