Three days after initial reports that a notorious hacking group had stolen information from more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers — and tried to sell the data online — parent company Live Nation Entertainment confirmed the breach in a regulatory filing late Friday.
On May 20, 2024, Live Nation identified “unauthorized activity within a third-party cloud database environment that contained company data (primarily from its subsidiary Ticketmaster LLC) and initiated an investigation with leading forensic investigators to understand what happened,” the company said. on May 31 SEC filing.
On May 27, 2024, a “criminal threat actor” allegedly offered Ticketmaster user data “for sale via the dark web,” according to Live Nation’s disclosure.
Currently, Live Nation does not believe the incident “has had a material impact on our overall business or on our financial condition or results of operations” – nor does it believe the hack is “reasonably likely” to have a material impact. moving forward. “We continue to evaluate the risks and our recovery efforts are ongoing,” the company said.
A hacking group called ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for stealing Ticketmaster data from 560 million customers. The 1.3 terabyte hoard is said to contain personal information about Ticketmaster users, such as names, credit card numbers, emails, home addresses and phone numbers. The hackers offered to sell the stolen Ticketmaster data for $500,000, as first reported by websites Hack reading and that of Australia CyberDaily.
It appears the hack does not include passwords for Ticketmaster accounts, but users should change their passwords as a precaution, according to Emsisoft cybersecurity analyst Brett Callow (via the New York Times).
“We are working to mitigate risk to our users and the company, and have notified and are cooperating with law enforcement,” Live Nation said in the filing. “Where appropriate, we also notify regulators and users regarding unauthorized access to personal information.”
The confirmation of Ticketmaster’s data security breach comes just over a week after the Justice Department sued Live Nation on antitrust grounds on May 23 in an effort to break up the company. The U.S. government’s lawsuit alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster illegally used monopoly power to dominate ticket sales and destroy competition. In addition to Ticketmaster, Live Nation owns or manages more than 265 concert venues in North America, including more than 60 of the 100 largest amphitheaters in the US.
