Remember the massive Ticketmaster hack that happened earlier this year? The leak turned out to be bigger than initially thought. For example, “440,000 tickets were stolen from Taylor Swift’s Eras tour,” which is a huge amount.
Cybersecurity publication Hackread reported that the hacker group ShinyHunters updated their ransom demand on Thursday, asking Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment to pay $8 million for the safe return of information. Although ShinyHunters claims to have previously accepted Live Nation’s “hasty” offer of $1 million, the organization has since evaluated the hacked data and revised its request. Apparently, ShinyHunters reasoned that the data was more valuable than they originally thought.
Ticketmaster confirms it suffered a massive hack. What you need to know.
“[W]We figured out how to make it more expensive, and the insurance companies were definitely going to accept that; we reopened negotiations for $8 million and let the negotiators and the insurance companies know.
According to ShinyHunters, the organization has obtained a total of 193 million ticket barcodes with a total value of more than $22.6 billion. This includes 440,000 tickets for Swift’s ongoing Eras tour and 30 million tickets for 65,000 other events.
It’s unclear when Live Nation offered to pay the $1 million ransom, or whether it actually happened. ShinyHunters initially tried to sell the data for $500,000 in late May, when the Ticketmaster data breach was first reported. At the time, the 1.3 terabytes of data were believed to contain sensitive information belonging to 560 million Ticketmaster customers. This includes the user’s full name, address, phone number, email address, ticket purchase history and details, and even some payment data such as credit card expiry date.
ShinyHunters’ latest announcement now provides more details about the breach, saying that the hacked information included 400 million encrypted credit cards, 440 million unique email addresses, and 680 million order details. The hacking group claims this makes it “the largest publicly disclosed non-scraping customer breach” [personally identifiable information] ever.
Mix and match speed of light
Mashable has reached out to Live Nation for comment.
Ticketmaster’s ongoing troubles
Ticketmaster has had a rough time lately, even beyond the general dislike it’s generally received. Last year, the company was the subject of a U.S. Senate hearing investigating an apparent lack of competition in the live music industry. The U.S. Department of Justice subsequently filed a lawsuit in May this year aimed at breaking up Live Nation, accusing it of violating antitrust laws. The complaint alleges that Ticketmaster handled more than 70% of ticket sales or resales at major U.S. concert venues in 2022.
Live Nation denies that Ticketmaster engages in monopolistic behavior, claiming in a previous statement to Mashable that “competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margins.” Of course, shrinking market share does not prevent a company from having a monopoly, especially Yes if it starts from 70% dominance.
This isn’t the first time Ticketmaster has clashed with Taylor Swift’s fans. Pre-sales for Swift’s Eras tour in 2022 failed miserably, and Ticketmaster later canceled public ticket sales citing “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.” The company issued a formal apology, but that didn’t stop disgruntled Swifties from later filing a lawsuit. Disgruntled fans accused Ticketmaster of operating an “anti-competitive scheme” to deceive fans by failing to disclose that it was sending more pre-sale codes than its actual ticket service.
Swift released an official statement following the Eras Tour ticket debacle, expressing her frustration and revealing that Ticketmaster had assured her team that it could handle the demand after they asked multiple times.
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them felt like they had to survive several bear attacks to get their tickets,” Swift wrote.
Unfortunately, for at least 440,000 Swifties, the headaches don’t seem to be over yet.
