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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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A hacker claims to have breached the data of more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers around the world and is now reportedly trying to sell that data for $500,000.
The hacker known as ShinyHunters has put the data, which includes names, addresses and credit card information, up for sale on the dark web, it was first reported by British site HackRead, before the news spread in Australia.
Australia's Department of Home Affairs told ABC News (Australia) that it was aware of the data breach, which was made public overnight on Tuesday. Newsweek reached out to the department for further comment is awaiting a response.
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The 1.3 terabytes of information was reportedly linked to millions of the worldwide ticket seller's customers.
"560 million customers full details (name, address, email, phone)," ShinyHunters said in its post seen by HackRead and CyberDaily. "Ticket sales, event information, order details."
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It is unclear what the impact will be for customers whose information has potentially been obtained by the hackers.
Ticketmaster, owned by Live Nation, is yet to respond to a request for comment from Newsweek made Thursday afternoon.
If any customers within the United States are found to have been compromised by the attack, the company will be required to notify them.
What to do if you're worried
Experts at Experian suggest that anyone worried about being affected should change passwords and pins to any potential accounts affected in a hack, while also keeping hold of any suspicious mail or electronic communications.
ShinyHunters first appeared in 2020, with its last big data breach reported in September 2023 involving Pizza Hut customers.
In that case, around 200,000 customers saw their information leaked, including addresses and phone numbers.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly tried to stop the hackers by shutting down the site they use to operate earlier this month, but without success.
This latest breach isn't the latest security issue faced by Ticketmaster, which was also found guilty in 2020 of hacking into a competitor's site.
Then, the company had to pay $10 million after hacking into CrowdSurge's systems to obtain its customer's data.
A few years later, when Taylor Swift tour tickets went on sale, the site was allegedly hit with several bot attacks which disrupted sales.
Ticketmaster's parent company Live Nation is now being sued by the US Department of Justice for what it calls the "monopolization and other unlawful conduct" by the company which "thwarts competition in markets across the live entertainment industry."
The DOJ says it wants to restore competition across the live concert industry, alleging that Live Nation-Ticketmaster holds too much market share, affecting how much fans pay to see shows and how much freedom artists and venues have.
"The live music industry in America is broken because Live Nation-Ticketmaster has an illegal monopoly," Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division said on May 23.
"Our antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster's monopoly and restore competition for the benefit of fans and artists."
This story was updated to correct that the hack was first reported by British site HackRead.
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