A hacking group claims they hacked global events giant Ticketmaster and stole the data of 560 million customers.
The group, called ShinyHunters, said in an online forum that the stolen data included the names, addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card information 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 is investigating the claims and that the FBI has offered assistance to Australian authorities, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Canberra told Agence France-Presse.
“The National Office of Cyber Security is working with Ticketmaster to understand the incident,” an Australian government spokesperson said in a statement. It 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 infringement.
There was no confirmation that this had occurred and the authenticity of the dataset provided by ShinyHunters could not be immediately verified.
The hack was first reported by the websites Hackread and Australia-based CyberDaily.
The hacking history of ShinyHunters
ShinyHunters rose to prominence in 2020-2021 when it harvested massive amounts of customer data from more than 60 companies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In January, a Seattle court jailed 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 massive hacking caused millions of dollars in losses for victimized companies and “immeasurable additional losses” for hundreds of millions of people whose data was sold to other criminals.
Hacks are affecting more and more people with increasingly serious consequences, Katina Michael, professor of cybersecurity at Australia’s University of Wollongong, 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 and are not investing in fundamental protection mechanisms such as two-factor authentication, Michael warned.
Ministry of Justice sues Ticketmaster and Live Nation
Based in Beverly Hills, Ticketmaster operates one of the largest online ticketing platforms in the world.
The Ministry of Justice has filed a federal lawsuit last week accused Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry, to the detriment of concertgoers and artists alike.
In a 128-page civil suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, federal officials alleged that Live Nation illegally stifled competition and unnecessarily burdened consumers, in part through its ownership of Ticketmaster, leaving it in in fact gains control over a large part of the market. the live entertainment market.
Justice Department officials said they are seeking structural changes in the way the company does business, including breaking up the two entities.
In 2022, Ticketmaster mishandling ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour sparked a huge public outcry over Live Nation’s grip on the entertainment and ticketing industry. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division was already investigating the company when the Swift fiasco unfolded, CBS News previously reported.
