Cost of seized tickets could be around $4.6 billion.
Taylor Swift fans may have been caught up in the recent Ticketmaster breach, with the ShinyHunters hacking group claiming to have unlawfully obtained 440,000 tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
“To celebrate the fourth of July, we present to you 440K Taylor Swift Eras game tickets” the group said in a recent BreachForums post, according to Tech.co.
The group also upped its initial ransom demand from around $1 million to $8 million after reassessing the damage leaking such data could do to Ticketmaster.
The value of the additional 30 million tickets extracted from Ticketmaster systems, on the other hand, is thought to be around $4.6 billion.
ShinyHunters claim to have obtained 980 million sales orders, order details relating to 680 million individual orders, 1.2 billion party lookup records, over 400 million email addresses, and millions of records from address verification systems. The group also says partial details relating to 400 million encrypted credit cards have also been exfiltrated from Ticketmaster’s system.
Extra Protections
In a statement sent to SC UK, Ticketmaster said its "SafeTix technology protects tickets by automatically refreshing a new and unique barcode every few seconds so it cannot be stolen or copied." The company claimed this is one of many fraud protections it has implemented to keep tickets safe and secure.
Ticketmaster also commented on claims of a ransom demand over the tickets, saying "some outlets are inaccurately reporting" about these claims. "We were never engaged for a ransom and did not offer them money," the company said.
Written by
Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.
Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.
