It is a gigantic fault which has mobilized the United States. The FBI has offered its assistance to the Australian government which is investigating, Thursday, May 30, the allegations of a group of computer hackers claiming to have stolen the data of 560 million customers of the global ticketing giant Ticketmaster.
“The National Cyber Security Office is in contact with Ticketmaster to understand the problem,” a government spokesperson said in a statement, while inviting people with “specific requests” to contact the platform directly.
Data available for $500,000
The world-renowned hacker group called “ShinyHunters” claimed on an online forum that the stolen data included names, addresses, phone numbers and some credit card details of Ticketmaster customers. The hacked data was available for $500,000, or around 460,000 euros, as part of an “exceptional sale”, according to the message.
The FBI has offered its help to the Australian authorities to shed light on this affair, a spokesperson for the United States embassy told AFP on Thursday. ShinyHunters rose to prominence in 2020 when they began posting massive amounts of customer information from more than 60 companies online, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In January, French hacker Sébastien Raoult, accused by American justice of having been part of the “ShinyHunters”, was sentenced to three years in prison by a Seattle judge. The magistrate also ordered him to repay five million dollars for the losses caused to the companies concerned.
US prosecutors said the massive hack caused millions of dollars in losses to businesses and “immeasurable additional losses” to hundreds of millions of individuals whose data was sold to other criminals. AFP contacted Ticketmaster for comment, with no immediate response.
Computer hacking “will increase”
Hacking affects more and more people and has increasingly serious consequences, Katina Michael, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Wollongong, told AFP. The number of people whose data is hacked “is going to increase, it could reach a billion in the future,” she said.
Governments, businesses and consumers are not doing enough to protect themselves and are not investing in basic protection mechanisms such as two-factor authentication (a process based on identity and access management that imposes two forms identification, editor’s note), warned Katina Michael.
California-based Ticketmaster operates one of the largest online ticketing platforms in the world. This alleged attack comes at a time when Ticketmaster is the subject of legal proceedings launched by the American authorities. Last week, the US Department of Justice subpoenaed the live entertainment giant Live Nation Entertainment, accusing it of anti-competitive practices in the organization of concerts as well as ticketing via its subsidiary Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster’s pricing practices, with high fees and a lack of alternatives, have long been a political issue in the United States, and little has been done to open the market to greater competition. The company claims that there is no basis for this legal action, which it says is the result of “intense political pressure and a lobbying campaign by its rivals and ticket resellers “.