Logo per Ticketmaster.
After years of criticism, Ticketmaster seems to formally have a target on its back. Today, the service has been revealed as the subject of a large-scale cyber attack from hacker group ShinyHunters, exposing upwards of 560 million users’ sensitive personal data, which is now listed for sale on a hacking forum for $500,000. This follows shortly after the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit filed against Live Nation Entertainment and the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of the TICKET Act, both of which set the company in the sites of government regulators. Ticketmaster has not yet commented on the attack.
Per ShinyHunters, which has gained notoriety in recent years for high-profile black-hat raids of AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, Wattpad and Mashable, the massive data leak includes customers’ full names, addresses, phone and email contact information and order history–including partial payment information, linking names to the last four digits of credit cards and expiration dates. Per Hackread, the collected information amounts to a sprawling 1.3 terabytes, and its massive list of affected customers makes the hack one of the largest in recent memory.
This hack arrives shortly after the U.S. Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, alleging that its parent company, Ticketmaster, violated consumer rights and antitrust laws. The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of N.Y. and backed by attorney generals from 29 states and Washington, D.C., and argues that Live Nation engaged in harmful practices that affected artists, venues, fans, and start-ups attempting to break into the industry.
“Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a release. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation.” Read Live Nation’s response and more on the suit here.
This article will be updated with Ticketmaster’s response to today’s hack.
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