Less than a week after Ticketmaster was in the news for being sued by the US Department of Justice (DoJ), it’s making headlines again.
On May 23, the DoJ filed an antitrust lawsuit seeking to “restore competition” by breaking up Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, alleging “illegal monopoly over US concert and event ticket sales.”
Now, Ticketmaster is in the news for an alleged hack that may have compromised the data of 560 million of its customers, according to Australian publication Cyber Daily.
On a popular hacking forum, a hacking group called The ShinyHunters shared that it was selling the allegedly stolen data for a “one-time” price of US$500,000 (C$685,560).
A screenshot of the post shows details of what the group says is contained in the package: credit card details like the last four digits and the expiration date, names, addresses, emails and phone numbers, order and event info, and even “customer fraud details” among other information.
The details are packed in 16 folders, with the largest one being 1.3 Terabytes.
Cyber Daily reports that another identical post was made in Russian on a different forum, and it’s unclear if that poster is linked to The ShinyHunters.
Daily Hive has contacted Ticketmaster to find out whether Canadians have been affected by the reported hack. We will update this story when the company responds.
The ShinyHunters: Pre-Ticketmaster rap sheet
Anyone familiar with Pokémon video games likely knows where the name of the group came from.
Hunting “shiny” high-spec Pokémon is an in-game activity, and thousands of YouTube videos show people doing it.
A shiny Scorbunny (Nintendo)
ShinyHunters is a well-known hacking group that became heavily active starting in 2020. It has claimed responsibility for a slew of data breaches since then, compromising data belonging to major companies like Microsoft, Wattpad, AT&T, Wishbone, and Mashable.
The data would then be leaked or sold on the dark web.
In 2022, the French daily Le Monde reported that French hacker Sébastien Raoult was arrested in Morocco. The FBI suspected him of being a member of The ShinyHunters.
This year in January, a 22-year-old Raoult was sentenced to three years in US prison.