Industry News

Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster data breach 

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Ticketmaster owner Live Nation has confirmed there has been ‘unauthorised activity’ on its database, after a group of hackers claimed they had stolen details of more than 500 million customers. 

In a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday (May 31), Live Nation said it had launched an investigation to understand what happened.

Last week, it was reported that a group of hackers called ‘ShinyHunters’ had accessed the personal information of 560 million Ticketmaster users in 1.3 terabytes of data. ShinyHunters then offered the Ticketmaster customer information for $500,000 (£394,000/€461,000) on a hacking community called Breach Forums.

In the filing, Live Nation said: “On May 20, 2024, Live Nation Entertainment identified unauthorised activity within a third-party cloud database environment containing Company data (primarily from its Ticketmaster subsidiary) and launched an investigation with industry-leading forensic investigators to understand what happened.

“On May 27, 2024, a criminal threat actor offered what it alleged to be Company user data for sale via the dark web. We are working to mitigate risk to our users and the Company, and have notified and are cooperating with law enforcement. As appropriate, we are also notifying regulatory authorities and users with respect to unauthorised access to personal information.”

It was also reported last week that Australia’s Department of Home Affairs was working with Ticketmaster “to understand the incident”, while a spokesperson for the FBI in the US told the BBC it “has no comment on this matter”.

The filing added: “As of the date of this filing, the incident has not had, and we do not believe it is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on our overall business operations or on our financial condition or results of operations. We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing.”