Arts & Culture

Forum Sirius hack continues to damage French cultural organisations

France’s data protection agency has been notified of a cyberattack on ticketing system provider Forum Sirius, which serves more than 400 cultural organisations.

The Forum Sirius database contains 5,986,188 records including user IDs, names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and other personal information although bank details are claimed to have been protected. Forum Sirius provides ticketing software for hundreds of cultural organisations including festivals, performance halls, and arenas across France.

It is claimed that those behind last month’s attack are offering to sell the database to a single buyer for $2,000 (£1,500/€1,850).

The Garonne theatre in Toulouse is one of Forum Sirius’ partners and offered an explanation to its customers.

“If you have created a customer account on the online ticketing, your password may also have been compromised, but a security reset has been carried out since the incident was discovered,” read a statement from the Garonne.

“The attacker can therefore no longer use it on the ticketing software.

“We would like to apologise for this inconvenience: we are currently deploying the necessary technical and legal measures.”

The breach has been reported by multiple bodies to France’s independent data protection agency, the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties, which will look to prevent any further damage.

The Culture Commune in the Pas-de-Calais department has also let customers know of the attack and states that it is “in the process of deploying the necessary technical and legal measures”.

It has urged people not to clink on any links included in emails from unknown senders, never to provide contact details or banking details even if the measure appears to come from a trusted source.

Advice has also been made for those affected to change all similar passwords used on other accounts.

TheTicketingBusiness has contacted Sirius for comment.

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