UPDATE: Hackers have been caught cutting the virtual line to acquire Burning Man tickets. According to Wired.com, Silicon Valley software engineers hacked into Ticketfly to get ahead of the game. They’ve been caught, and Burning Man officials have announced that these orders will be voided. Yay, karma!

The realization came through social media, when software engineer Jonathan Hart tweeted a flaw he discovered that allowed him to bypass the massive line to acquire tickets. Many similar announcements followed on social media, which eventually led the event to discover a “backdoor” hackers had developed.

Software engineer Michael Vacirca explained, “They left code in the page that allowed you to generate the waiting room URL ahead of time. If you knew how to form the URL based on the code segment then you could get in line before everyone else who clicked right at noon.”

Burning Man admits to the error and says they will put the hacked tickets back on the market for the scheduled last-minute sale in August. “The good news (for us, not them) is that we can track them down, and we’re going to cancel their orders,” Megan K. Miller, Burning Man’s director of communications told Wired. “Steps are being taken to prevent this from happening again in future sales.”

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Burning Man went on sale today, and to the disappointment of many, the annual festival/community held in the Black Rock City dessert of Nevada got rid of all 40,000 tickets in less than an hour. A massive 80,000 people had registered for the event this year, and about half got shut out.

What’s worse for those hoping to get to the playa is that tickets are already on sale on StubHub for $1,000.

Burners are not pleased and took to social media to express their frustration:









Stubhub tix going for $1,000:



The festival’s website offers some suggestions for those who weren’t able to acquire a ticket on their blog.