Live Nation Entertainment
, the parent company of
Ticketmaster
, has said that it is investigating a data breach at its ticket sales and distribution unit. According to a report,
personal and financial information
about 560 million customers is on sale.
The US-based company has said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it discovered the hacking on May 20.
It found “unauthorised activity” in a third-party cloud database that mainly contained Ticketmaster data.
Last week a little-known cybercrime group named ShinyHunters said it had stolen user data of over 500 million Ticketmaster customers. The group has claimed that it has a 1.3TB cache of data that apparently contains personal data like names, email/home addresses and phone numbers, credit card details, and other information and is selling it for $500,000 on the dark web.
What the company has to say
Without naming the hacker group, Live Nation said in a filing that “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,” the company said.
“We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing,” it added.
Regulatory issues with Live Nation
The data breach comes as the concert promoter is battling regulatory scrutiny over antitrust concerns. The company, last week, was hit with its first (in a likely a wave of) consumer antitrust lawsuits after the US government and states sued to break up the firm. The company’s Ticketmaster unit is accused of illegally inflating concert ticket prices.
English (US) ·