Ticketmaster suffers data breach, faces class action lawsuit

Hacking group ShinyHunters has claimed to have been behind the data breach of live music ticketing giant Ticketmaster, which compromised 560 million users’ personal data.

The hacking group has claimed to have access to sensitive information of users, including their names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, ticket sales and event details, order information, and partial payment card data. The payment data includes the customer’s name, the last four digits of card numbers, expiration dates, and even customer fraud details. ShinyHunters has posted screenshots of the data on Breach Forums and has offered to sell 1.3 terabytes of data from 15 file folders for $500,000.

The amount of sensitive personal information being compromised highlights the severity of the attack, as this may lead to potential financial fraud, identity theft and other cyberattacks against the compromised users.

Following the incident, a California law firm, Clarkson Law Firm, has filed a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation Entertainment on behalf of its users for failing to ‘properly secure and safeguard’ its customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) through ‘adequate and reasonable cybersecurity procedures and protocols.’

Ticketmaster has had a chequered past of cybersecurity and ethical challenges.  On 26 January 2023, the company admitted that an attack by bots had disrupted the ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s concerts. On 23 May, the US Justice Department (DoJ) sued Live Nation-Ticketmaster for monopolising markets across the live concert industry.