Hacking group claims Ticketmaster breach that yielded data of 560 million customers

A group of hackers claims to have breached global events giant Ticketmaster and stolen the details of 560 million customers.

The group, called ShinyHunters, said in an online forum that the stolen data included names, addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card details of Ticketmaster customers.

The data was available for $500,000 in a “one-time sale,” the group’s post said.

The Australian government said Thursday it was investigating the allegations, and the FBI has offered assistance to Australian authorities, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Canberra told Agence France-Presse.

“The National Cyber ​​Security Office is collaborating with Ticketmaster to understand the incident,” an Australian government spokesperson said in a statement. He urged people with “specific questions” to contact Ticketmaster directly.

AFP has contacted Ticketmaster for comment.

Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, have not commented on the alleged breach.

There was no confirmation that this occurred and the authenticity of the dataset offered by ShinyHunters could not immediately be verified.

The hack was first reported by the websites Hackler and based in Australia CyberDaily.

ShinyHunters Hacking Story

ShinyHunters gained notoriety in 2020-21 when it published massive amounts of customer records from more than 60 companies, according to the US Department of Justice.

In January, a court in Seattle arrested Sebastien Raoult, a French computer hacker who was a member of ShinyHunters.

He was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Prosecutors said the extensive hack caused millions of dollars in losses to the companies that were victims and “immeasurable additional losses” to hundreds of millions of people whose data was sold to other criminals.

Hackers are affecting more people, with increasingly serious consequences, Katina Michael, a cybersecurity professor at the University of Wollongong in Australia, told AFP.

The number of people hacked “will grow, it could reach a billion in the future,” she said.

Governments, businesses and consumers are not doing enough to protect themselves or investing in basic protection mechanisms like two-factor authentication, Michael warned.

Department of Justice suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation

Beverly Hills-based Ticketmaster operates one of the largest online ticketing platforms in the world.

The Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit last week, accusing Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry to the detriment of viewers and artists.

On a 128-page civil case filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, federal authorities alleged that Live Nation illegally frustrated competition and unduly burdened consumers, in part through its ownership of Ticketmaster, which effectively gives it control over much of the live entertainment market.

Justice Department officials said they are seeking structural changes to the way the company does business, which could include separating the two entities.

In 2022, Ticketmaster’s mishandling of ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour sparked massive public outcry over Live Nation’s dominance in the entertainment and ticketing industries. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division was already investigating the company when the Swift fiasco unfolded, CBS News previously reported.