Ticket Master confirmed in federal filing On Friday, he was investigating a data breach after a hacking group known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for stealing the information of more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers.
In the depositto the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, said it had “identified unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment.”
Who is behind this breach?
ShinyHunters, a hacker group believed to have been formed around 2020, is believed to be behind this breach.
Brett Callow, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said it was a “credible threat actor,” although not much more is known about the group.
Its main goal appears to be to obtain personal files and sell them.
Its past victims include Microsoft and AT&T, among dozens of other companies in the United States and elsewhere, according to federal prosecutors.
In March, AT&T confirmed a violation in a press release and said it had affected around 70 million past or present customers.
In January, the US Department of Justice announced that a 22-year-old ShinyHunters member – a French citizen named Sébastien Raoult – had been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and theft identity aggravated.
Who was affected by the Ticketmaster breach?
The hack was first revealed in a May 28 post on a forum called BreachForums.
According to a screenshot of the post shared by Mr Callow, the group said it held the credentials of 560 million Ticketmaster customers, including credit card numbers and ticket sales.
The group said the asking price for the data – estimated to be 1.3 terabytes in size – was $500,000.
It was not immediately clear when the breach occurred.
According to Ticketmaster’s public filing, the company first identified “unauthorized activity” on May 20.
“We are working to mitigate risks to our users and the company, and we have notified and are cooperating with law enforcement,” the filing said. “Where applicable, we also notify regulatory authorities and users of any unauthorized access to personal information.”
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment Friday. Representatives for Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for additional comment.
In its filing, Live Nation said it did not believe the breach would have “a material impact on our overall business operations or our financial condition or results of operations.”
I am a Ticketmaster customer. What should I do to protect myself?
So far, Mr. Callow said, it does not appear that customers’ passwords have been compromised.
But if you have a Ticketmaster account, you should still change your password as a precaution, he said.
This is the latest episode that puts Ticketmaster under scrutiny.
The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Live Nation on May 23, calling on a federal court to dissolve the company over what the government said was an illegally maintained monopoly on the entertainment industry in direct.
The company called the government’s accusations “baseless allegations.”
