Ticketmaster hack: Canadians’ data likely among leaked information
Global News
According to a data sample shared with Global News, it appears the personal information of many Canadian Ticketmaster customers was stolen by hackers.
The personal information of Canadian Ticketmaster customers appears to have been stolen by hackers, according to a sample of the data shared with Global News.
Twelve files containing spreadsheets of data allegedly represent a small fraction of the Ticketmaster data stolen by infamous hacking group ShinyHunters. The group claimed early last week that it stole 1.3 terabytes of data, containing the personal information of 560 million customers.
The data — shared with Global News by an expert who has been granted anonymity for fear of criminal prosecution —amounts to just 37.5 megabytes, and appears to include the personal information of tens of thousands of people, including full names, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, partial credit card details and transaction details.
A preliminary analysis of the location data in the trove suggests that the vast majority of the data comes from customers in the United States. Canadians are the second-largest demographic group, followed by Mexicans. A small amount of data originates from Europe, Asia, Australia and Central and South America.
In the days following news of the hack, Ticketmaster did not comment publicly. Its parent company, Live Nation, acknowledged the potential data breach in a Friday SEC filing, reporting that it “identified unauthorized activity” in a third-party hosted database on May 20 and had launched an investigation “to understand what happened.”
A week later, on May 27, ShinyHunters listed the data for sale on the dark web for US$500,000, catapulting the story into the public eye.
“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 unauthorized access to personal information,” Live Nation wrote in the Friday filing.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation have not responded to multiple emails from Global News regarding the data breach and whether Canadians’ data was leaked.
