The Ticketmaster Breach Is a Cautionary Nightmare ⇥ globalnews.ca

Saba Aziz, Global News:

Ticketmaster has finally notified its users who may have been impacted by a data breach — one month after Global News first reported that the personal information of Canadian customers was likely stolen.

In an email to its customers on Monday, Ticketmaster said that their personal information may have been obtained by an unauthorized third party from a cloud database that was hosted by a separate third-party data services provider.

Ticketmaster says this might include “encrypted credit card information” from “some customers”.

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

Monday, the hacking group that breached Ticketmaster released new data that they said can be used to create more than 38,000 concert tickets nationwide, including to sought after shows like Olivia Rodrigo, Bruce Springsteen, Hamilton, Tyler Childers, the Jonas Brothers, and Los Angeles Dodgers games. The data would allow someone to create and print a ticket that was already sold to someone else, creating a situation where Ticketmaster and venues might have to sort out which tickets are from legitimate buyers and which are the result of the hack for shows that are taking place as early as today.

These are arguably problems created by the scale and scope of Ticketmaster’s operations. This series of data releases affects so many people and events because parent company Live Nation is a chokepoint for entertainment thanks to a merger approved by U.S. authorities. If this industry were more distributed, it would certainly present more opportunities for individual breaches, but the effect of each would be far smaller.