Forged tickets on Dark Web

[cambsy]

Just read on BBC news website, that forged rail tickets can be bought on the dark web with bit coins, the journalist bought a first class Hastings-Manchester for £111 instead of £285, though it didn't work the barriers because the magnetic strip didn't work, he was let through the gates by staff, it will be shown on BBC inside out Monday 31st October 7.30pm.

Think if it caught on it would be bad, as to naked eye they look like normal paper ticket, what do you all think?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37800623

Forged rail tickets are being sold on a hidden part of the internet and being used at stations without detection, an undercover BBC investigation has found.

They can be bought for a fraction of the genuine fare on the "dark web", using the virtual currency Bitcoin....

...Rail fraud investigator Mike Keeber said the counterfeit tickets were very convincing, but "there's something on there that shouldn't be on there".

"I'd rather not say what it is, as people who make this [could] change it and make our lives harder."
Some transport firms are testing new technology, including Transport for London which uses bank cards, so everything is traceable back to an individual's bank....

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Fortunately the 'dark web' and bitcoins are beyond the scope of most normal people, even those who are happy to illegally download films and music, so hopefully it won't be a major problem.

I notice there are a lot of codes on the new design tickets, possibly connected to preventing this. Wouldn't be hard to have a four digit verification code for where and when a ticket was purchased that could be checked on a conductors machine.

 

[Railops]

BBC are a bit behind the times with this little piece, I saw these tickets 3 or 4 years ago.

 

[district]

If someone is willing to go to the hassle of getting bit coins and dodging all the child porn, drugs and weapons auctions that exist on the deep web to get a forged ticket then fair play to them.

 

[matt_world2004]

There doesnt seem to be much of a price reduction. Certainly not worth the risk of getting caught over,

 

[Tetchytyke]

Forged tickets are not new, but with better printers they can look more realistic than ever before.

But then talking about the "dark web" and "bitcoins" makes it look organised and sinister, because most people don't know what either of those things are.

 

[fusionblue]

I'm really not a fan of the term "dark web". Not because of it's real word connotations but how TV (particularly US procedurals) have "frankensteined" it into meaning something else completely - when in reality its just the less savoury bits of the internet nobody wants to openly talk about.

 

[Railops]

Forged tickets are not new, but with better printers they can look more realistic than ever before.

But then talking about the "dark web" and "bitcoins" makes it look organised and sinister, because most people don't know what either of those things are.

I think you'll find both are far more popular than you think.

 

[Tetchytyke]

in reality its just the less savoury bits of the internet nobody wants to openly talk about.

I'm not sure I agree, I take the "dark web" to mean specifically the stuff on Tor and Freenet which can't be found using an ordinary web browser.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I think you'll find both are far more popular than you think.

It depends how you define "popular". Tor is certainly well-used by people in the know, but even then only has about 1.5m-2m daily users in the entire world. In the UK, there's about 75,000 daily Tor users. Taken as a proportion of internet traffic, that's basically statistically negligible.

Most people don't go anywhere near Tor and they don't go anywhere near Bitcoins.

 

[Gareth Marston]

How soon before staff get asked if they know the web address!

Had bloke in here the other week wanting to know the website where people sell unwanted AP tickets.....

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Train ticket to Manchester guv?

I'm really not a fan of the term "dark web". Not because of it's real word connotations but how TV (particularly US procedurals) have "frankensteined" it into meaning something else completely - when in reality its just the less savoury bits of the internet nobody wants to openly talk about.

Actually it is a specific thing - encrypted networks and systems that can only be accessed using dedicated software. Not something you could stumble upon using google. Which does make it easier for prosecutors - there no way you could buy anything on there 'accidentally'.

-----------

On the plus side, perhaps this could finally speed up adoption of a national e-tickets system on our trains. These would be far harder to forge and work well in almost every other country in the world.

 

[Sprinter153]

I withdrew a selection of appalling PAD-OXF SVR fakes a while back (and I mean appalling, price and issue date missing, smudgy ink, wrong shorthand for origin, magstripe read as a Zone 1-4 travelcard). The users were a group of Asian tourists who spoke very little English. They apparently bought them from a rather pushy spiv at the station.

It seems to be a rather big business these days, you can seemingly produce tickets that are passable at first glance with an inkjet printer.

 

[Deepgreen]

There doesnt seem to be much of a price reduction.Certainpy not worth the risk of getting caught over,

How is £111 against the correct price of £285 (a 61% drop) for the example quoted not "much of a price reduction"?

If the printing, etc., is to the high standard that the item speaks of, the risk would seem to be low as long as ticket barrier staff continue to wave people through based on the present unreliability of stripe reading, etc.

 

[matt_world2004]

Because at that price you may as well hunt for an advance ticket. The season ticket mentiomed in the article seemed like a much better proposition. You dont know who you are dealing with when buying these tickets. They could take your £111 and not deliver the goods

 

[Tim R-T-C]

How is £111 against the correct price of £285 (a 61% drop) for the example quoted not "much of a price reduction"?

If the printing, etc., is to the high standard that the item speaks of, the risk would seem to be low as long as ticket barrier staff continue to wave people through based on the present unreliability of stripe reading, etc.

Factor in the cost-risk of sending £111 to some mysterious website, along with presumably giving them your address and details to produce and send you the ticket. What are you going to do if simply nothing shows up?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Forged tickets are not new, but with better printers they can look more realistic than ever before.

But then talking about the "dark web" and "bitcoins" makes it look organised and sinister, because most people don't know what either of those things are.

Well, the dark web is a fairly well recognized term - and seems reasonably accurate: It's dark both in the sense of being obscure (easy to hide your activities) and being a place where much that is harmful, illegal, and dubious, happens. And if people are selling very realistic tickets online, then it very definitely is 'organised', so I don't see why leading people to believe it is such would be a problem.

Incidentally, the justification by the criminals responsible, quoted by the BBC, does look pretty appalling:

The fraudsters said they were offering "an affordable public service".

The group, who are not being named by the BBC, said in a statement: "The train companies keep stuffing their pockets with public subsidies while treating the operation of rail services as an inconvenience.

"No-one should be ashamed of getting one over companies like Southern Rail.

"We wish one day everyone will be able to use an affordable public service. Until then, we will be providing it."

Offering a public service? Yeah, right. More like, making large profits at the expense of legitimate fair-paying passengers who are the ones who ultimately pay for the fraud. The way that people can find these kind of pseudo-justifications for what an activity that I would have little doubt is motivated by pure greed seems to me somewhat worrying.

 

[yorkie]

Forged tickets are not new, but with better printers they can look more realistic than ever before.

True, it's more affordable than ever to make things look realistic. And harder to detect, as there are numerous different ticket designs (even the same machine can have two different printers, so a reservation coupon may be in a completely different style and font to the accompanying ticket, for example).

...- when in reality its just the less savoury bits of the internet nobody wants to openly talk about.

That's not a good description of it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

How is £111 against the correct price of £285 (a 61% drop) for the example quoted not "much of a price reduction"?

If someone is prepared to go to extra effort, they can bring the £285 fare quoted down to a decent level by legitimate means!

The tickets mentioned in the article are clearly less sophisticated to some of those produced in Eastern Europe and sold in person at greatly discounted prices that do work the barriers. The best people at spotting these are actually LU staff! For example, when a sudden spike in paper Travelcard usage occured on the northern end of the Jubilee Line. It was discovered that a high proportion of these tickets - which did work the barriers - were purporting to be issued at Waterloo (thought the numbers on the ticket indicated they were issued at somewhere like Jewellery Quarter!) so they set up the gates to reject paper tickets when revenue staff were there, and caught people by doing a manual check. Certain TOCs weren't bothered or interested apparently!

Someone may use such a ticket several times and get away with it, but they'd be caught eventually, especially if they were making the same regular journey, and even more so if others were doing the same journey on the dodgy tickets also.

 

[Trackman]

£64.50 cheapest first advance peak. and that gets you breakfast out of Euston.
I suppose if you do buy one from the so called 'dark web' it's going to take a few days to reach you, so why not pay for a £116 first advance and avoid certain prosecution?

 

[yorkie]

£64.50 cheapest first advance peak. and that gets you breakfast out of Euston.
I suppose if you do buy one from the so called 'dark web' it's going to take a few days to reach you, so why not pay for a £116 first advance and avoid certain prosecution?

I doubt there is going to be much market for that sort of ticket; I think the fake Travelcard Seasons which work barriers are likely to be more of a concern. The TOCs are lucky LU are looking out for them, from what I hear.

 

[mrmartin]

You'd also be surprised the quality of customer service and reliability of merchants on the dark web; there is a very strict rating system which merchants hate to lose (and all transactions can be verified as they go through escrow through the marketplace - no fake tripadvisor style reviews will work without a lot more effort).

I've been told the quality of service puts normal e-commerce retailers to shame.

 

[ainsworth74]

You'd also be surprised the quality of customer service and reliability of merchants on the dark web; there is a very strict rating system which merchants hate to lose (and all transactions can be verified as they go through escrow through the marketplace - no fake tripadvisor style reviews will work without a lot more effort).

I've been told the quality of service puts normal e-commerce retailers to shame.

Speaking on the basis of what you've been told rather than first hand experience of course

 

[fusionblue]

That's not a good description of it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I'm referring more to its application than its technical underpinnings. Things like Silk Road is just one well known instance which sprang out of it.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Could they make a handheld machine that would test the strip?

Run a few spot checks a major stations on people whose tickets won't open the barriers, with big publicity, and that will deter a lot of folk.

 

[HH]

Not to mention the delicious possibility of blackmail...

 

[Bletchleyite]

Full e-ticketing is the best solution to this - i.e. the situation where the ticket is a record in a database held by the railway, and the physical piece of card/phone/home printed bit of A4/reference number on the back of a fag packet/whatever is just a reference to it. It would be much harder to sneak a "ticket" into the database held by the railway.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Full e-ticketing is the best solution to this - i.e. the situation where the ticket is a record in a database held by the railway, and the physical piece of card/phone/home printed bit of A4/reference number on the back of a fag packet/whatever is just a reference to it. It would be much harder to sneak a "ticket" into the database held by the railway.

You mean that system used by every other railway network in the world as well as all airlines and event tickets for at least the last five years?

Nah. Cardboard it is.

 

[Deepgreen]

Because at that price you may as well hunt for an advance ticket. The season ticket mentiomed in the article seemed like a much better proposition. You dont know who you are dealing with when buying these tickets. They could take your £111 and not deliver the goods

Operating the Southern business model, then!

 

[jon0844]

If only the industry was a bit more advanced on smartcards by now, although to ATOC/RDG and the DfT they're still some futuristic technology that's as yet unproven..

At least if they introduced them for regular travelers and kept paper tickets for others, they could inspect paper tickets a bit more carefully as there would be more time, and less of them.

Fake tickets have been talked about on here for years, so the people in the know knew how big a problem it was long before the BBC revealed anything.

 

[Tetchytyke]

If only the industry was a bit more advanced on smartcards by now

Smartcards aren't necessarily the solution either, given that people have been able to hack into MiFare chips before now...

There was a case recently in Australia where an IT student in Perth was able to hack into his SmartRider card to give himself free travel.

 

[jon0844]

I expect there are different standards and levels of encryption. We just need to adopt the right technology.