Hackers have dealt a major blow to the ticket empire by publishing 1.3 TB of the company's data.
Ticketmaster's IT systems were allegedly hacked by cybercriminals who claim to have stolen 1.3 TB of data on 560 million customers of the corporation – and now sell all the information for $500,000.
The attackers claimed to have gained access to personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, order details, and partially credit card details.
The Australian Department of the Interior confirmed that the government is aware of the incident and the National Cyber Security Administration is already working with Ticketmaster to clarify all the circumstances. However, Ticketmaster itself has not yet given any comments about the incident and did not say when exactly the data was stolen.
The ShinyHunters group put the allegedly stolen Ticketmaster files up for sale on a darknet forum and said the data included "details of customer fraud" and "much more."
Experts from VX-Underground expressed doubts about the authenticity of the data. According to them, the theft could have been committed by other criminals, and ShinyHunters only sells stolen goods on their behalf. The database presumably contains records from 2011 and even earlier.
Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow noted that it is not yet clear whether the database is authentic and when exactly it was obtained. However, judging by the published screenshots, the sale of data began on May 28 on the newly revived BreachForums forum, whose administrator is ShinyHunters.
Announcement of the sale of Ticketmaster data
ShinyHunters also claims that they tried to contact Ticketmaster before putting the data up for sale, but received no response. The group is already known for other high-profile cyberattacks, including stealing the data of 70 million AT&T customers, which they tried to sell for $1 million.
The data leak occurred at an unfortunate time for Ticketmaster, owned by Live Nation Entertainment Corporation. Recently, the US Department of Justice sued the company for its anti-competitive actions and monopoly control over the live concert industry.
The information security company Dasera responded to the attack, telling The Register that a data leak could seriously affect the reputation and trust of Ticketmaster customers. According to Dasera, in order to restore trust, the company should be as transparent as possible about the incident, its consequences and measures taken to prevent similar situations in the future. Dasera offers to conduct a full audit and review of the entire Ticketmaster security system.
ShinyHunters is a hacker group that specializes in stealing and selling user data from various websites and services. The group first came to attention in April 2020 and has since claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile data breaches, including Tokopedia, Wattpad, Pixlr, Bonobos, BigBasket, Mathway, Unacademy, MeetMindful, Microsoft's GitHub account, etc.
BreachForums has long been a headache for law enforcement agencies. Its former administrator, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, known by the pseudonym "Pompompurin", was sentenced to 20 years of probation in January, but Shiny Hunters revived BreachForums, which attracted new participants, and a little later the new site was hacked, and the data of more than 4,700 users was online.
Then the FBI took over the site again, and after taking over the BreachForums infrastructure, a popular USDoD hacker announced the launch of Breach Nation just 24 hours after a notice of the FBI site takeover appeared on the BreachForums homepage.
Ticketmaster's IT systems were allegedly hacked by cybercriminals who claim to have stolen 1.3 TB of data on 560 million customers of the corporation – and now sell all the information for $500,000.
The attackers claimed to have gained access to personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, order details, and partially credit card details.
The Australian Department of the Interior confirmed that the government is aware of the incident and the National Cyber Security Administration is already working with Ticketmaster to clarify all the circumstances. However, Ticketmaster itself has not yet given any comments about the incident and did not say when exactly the data was stolen.
The ShinyHunters group put the allegedly stolen Ticketmaster files up for sale on a darknet forum and said the data included "details of customer fraud" and "much more."
Experts from VX-Underground expressed doubts about the authenticity of the data. According to them, the theft could have been committed by other criminals, and ShinyHunters only sells stolen goods on their behalf. The database presumably contains records from 2011 and even earlier.
Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow noted that it is not yet clear whether the database is authentic and when exactly it was obtained. However, judging by the published screenshots, the sale of data began on May 28 on the newly revived BreachForums forum, whose administrator is ShinyHunters.
Announcement of the sale of Ticketmaster data
ShinyHunters also claims that they tried to contact Ticketmaster before putting the data up for sale, but received no response. The group is already known for other high-profile cyberattacks, including stealing the data of 70 million AT&T customers, which they tried to sell for $1 million.
The data leak occurred at an unfortunate time for Ticketmaster, owned by Live Nation Entertainment Corporation. Recently, the US Department of Justice sued the company for its anti-competitive actions and monopoly control over the live concert industry.
The information security company Dasera responded to the attack, telling The Register that a data leak could seriously affect the reputation and trust of Ticketmaster customers. According to Dasera, in order to restore trust, the company should be as transparent as possible about the incident, its consequences and measures taken to prevent similar situations in the future. Dasera offers to conduct a full audit and review of the entire Ticketmaster security system.
ShinyHunters is a hacker group that specializes in stealing and selling user data from various websites and services. The group first came to attention in April 2020 and has since claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile data breaches, including Tokopedia, Wattpad, Pixlr, Bonobos, BigBasket, Mathway, Unacademy, MeetMindful, Microsoft's GitHub account, etc.
BreachForums has long been a headache for law enforcement agencies. Its former administrator, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, known by the pseudonym "Pompompurin", was sentenced to 20 years of probation in January, but Shiny Hunters revived BreachForums, which attracted new participants, and a little later the new site was hacked, and the data of more than 4,700 users was online.
Then the FBI took over the site again, and after taking over the BreachForums infrastructure, a popular USDoD hacker announced the launch of Breach Nation just 24 hours after a notice of the FBI site takeover appeared on the BreachForums homepage.
