Ticketmaster hackers withhold data from 440,000 Taylor Swift ticket holders and want to extort ransom

Remember the massive Ticketmaster hack earlier this year? Well, it turns out that this breach was bigger than initially thought. As big as “440,000 compromised tickets just for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.”

Cybersecurity publication Hackread reports that the hacking group ShinyHunters updated its ransom demand on Thursday, demanding that Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation Entertainment shell out $8 million for the safe return of the information. Although ShinyHunters claimed to have previously accepted a “rushed” offer of $1 million from Live Nation, the group has since evaluated the hacked data and revised its demands. Apparently, ShinyHunters concluded that the data is significantly more valuable than they initially thought.

“We figured out how to make it much more expensive and the insurance company will certainly accept that. We’ll reopen negotiations at $8 million and inform the negotiator and the insurance company,” reads a post by ShinyHunters (via a screenshot from Hackread) published on the notorious hacker forum Breach Forums.

According to ShinyHunters, the group has obtained a total of 193 million ticket barcodes with a total value of over $22.6 billion. This includes 440,000 tickets for Taylor Swift’s ongoing Eras Tour, as well as 30 million more for 65,000 other events.

It’s unclear when exactly Live Nation allegedly offered to pay the $1 million ransom, or if it even happened. ShinyHunters attempted to sell the data for $500,000 in late May, when the Ticketmaster hack was first reported. At the time, the 1.3 terabytes were believed to contain sensitive information from 560 million Ticketmaster customers. This included users’ full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, their ticket purchase history and details, and even partial payment data such as credit card expiration dates.

ShinyHunters’ latest announcement now provides more details about the data leak. It says that the hacked information includes 400 million encrypted credit cards, 440 million unique email addresses, and 680 million order details. The hacking group claims that this is “the largest publicly disclosed non-scraping data leak ever.”

Mashable has reached out to Live Nation for comment.

Ticketmaster’s ongoing problems

Ticketmaster hasn’t had it easy lately, even aside from the general antipathy it usually receives. Last year, the company was the subject of a U.S. Senate hearing examining the apparent lack of competition in the live music industry. The U.S. Department of Justice later filed a lawsuit in May seeking to break up Live Nation, accusing the company of violating antitrust laws. According to the lawsuit, over 70 percent of tickets sold or resold to major U.S. concert venues in 2022 were handled by Ticketmaster.

For its part, Live Nation has denied that Ticketmaster has a monopoly, claiming in a previous statement to Mashable that “competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.” Of course, a shrinking market share does not preclude a company from having a monopoly, especially when it starts from a 70 percent dominant position.

This isn’t the first time Ticketmaster has run afoul of Taylor Swift fans, either. The presale for Swift’s 2022 Eras Tour was an infamous fiasco, and Ticketmaster subsequently canceled public ticket sales due to “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.” The company issued an official apology, but that didn’t avert a subsequent lawsuit from angry Swifties. Disgruntled fans accused Ticketmaster of operating an “anti-competitive scheme” and deceiving fans by failing to disclose that it had sent out more presale codes than it could actually serve with tickets.

Swift released an official statement following the Eras Tour ticket debacle, expressing her frustration and saying that Ticketmaster assured her team that they could handle the demand after they asked multiple times.

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really makes me angry that many of them feel like they had to endure multiple bear attacks to get them,” Swift wrote.

Unfortunately, it seems that the trouble is not over yet for at least 440,000 of these Swifties.