Ticketing platform Mookh Africa has blamed a bot attack for ticketing glitches that have affected the purchase of the highly sought-after tickets for the Kenya-Madagascar quarter-final clash in the ongoing African Nations Championships (CHAN).
In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Mookh confirmed that their platform temporarily went down, attributing the downtime to their systems getting overwhelmed by genuine ticket purchasers and automated bots.
"When sales opened, our system was overwhelmed by automated bots, preventing genuine fans from securing tickets as intended," Mookh said in a statement.
Mookh further assured fans that its technical team was working on a resolution before reopening the platform for fans to purchase tickets for the game, slated for Friday, August 22.
"We know how important it is to you to have a fair chance of getting tickets, and we've heard your frustrations. Our team is actively working on the issue so that tickets go to fans - not bots," the statement added.
Earlier on Tuesday, the ticketing giants announced that ticket purchases for the Friday game at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani, would go live from midday, sparking excitement and anxiety from Kenyans.
However, mere minutes after midday, the website went down, with users taking to social media to decry receiving varying error messages, with the outcome being the same: that they couldn't purchase the tickets.
Among the error messages received was a 404 error, also known as ‘Page Not Found,’ which typically indicates that the requested page or resource could not be found on the server.
Other users reported that the website took too long to load, while others were hit with a message that the portal would be opened at a later time.
As thousands logged onto the website to purchase tickets, some users also alleged to have received a message stating they were blocked from accessing the ticketing platform.
The message from Mookh to the blocked user specifically stated, "The website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution."
The bots being referred to by Mookh are automated programmes designed to outperform humans in purchasing the tickets by rapidly filling out forms and completing transactions.
