Live Nation rocked by security breach: Ticketmaster user data for sale

The entertainment company Live Nation announced that its subsidiary, Ticketmaster, had been hacked on 20 May. A cybercriminal offered user data for sale on the dark web.

TechCrunch reported that Live Nation informed the public about the incident only after more than a week and reported it to the appropriate regulatory authorities.

The incident was detected by Live Nation when unauthorized activity was noticed in a database managed by an external cloud provider, whose identity the company has not disclosed. A Ticketmaster spokesperson confirmed, however, that the database was hosted on the servers of Snowflake, a company specialized in data storage and analytics.

Snowflake communicated that the attack might have affected a limited number of customers but did not disclose specific details. Snowflake spokesperson declined to comment on the Ticketmaster breach. Similarly, Live Nation and Ticketmaster representatives have not released a public statement regarding the details of the incident.

The administrator of the popular cybercriminal forum BreachForums claims to possess data of 560 million customers, including Ticketmaster users' data such as ticket sales information and payment card details. TechCrunch had access to some of this data, which, after verifying email addresses, turned out to be authentic.

In May, the Department of Justice and 30 attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation, accusing the company of monopolistic practices.