Hackers are said to have leaked Ticketmaster tickets for Taylor Swift tour and more

Several industry publications reported that a hacker group leaked over 38,000 print-at-home tickets from Ticketmaster for 154 upcoming concerts, including Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour,” Pearl Jam, Phish and Foo Fighters.

This is all part of an alleged ongoing extortion scheme against Ticketmaster that began in May when a well-known hacker group called ShinyHunters stole personal information from over 500 million Ticketmaster customers and sold it on the dark web.

The cyberattack was confirmed by Ticketmaster’s parent company Live Nation in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which said it had detected “unauthorized activity in a third-party cloud database environment containing company data.” The third-party database was Snowflake, a cloud storage company used by several high-profile companies that have also been involved in other data breaches.

It is unclear whether Ticketmaster or its parent company ever notified affected customers about the data theft, although most states have a legal obligation for companies to do so.

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Now another hacker group called Sp1d3rHunters, which appears to be linked to ShinyHunters, claimed in an online forum that it had barcode data from thousands of printable tickets and would release them if a ransom was not paid.

According to industry media such as Infosecurity Magazine and BleepingComputer, the group initially stated that it had barcode data from 170,000 tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and would hand them over if its demands were not met.

Ticketmaster apparently responded to the threat by claiming that its SafeTix technology automatically updates barcodes, making attempts to clone and sell them futile. Scripps News has not independently confirmed Ticketmaster’s response.

Sp1d3rHunters hit back, explaining in another forum post that the allegedly stolen ticket information was for physical ticket types and therefore cannot be updated. If true, Ticketmaster would have to void and reissue all stolen tickets.

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BleepingComputer said the hacker group’s latest post included a link to a CSV file with barcode data for 38,745 TicketFast tickets, which Ticketmaster uses to distribute print-at-home event passes. The post also includes instructions on how to convert the allegedly leaked ticket data into a scannable barcode that can be used to create the tickets.

The group claims the data could be used to buy tickets for events such as Cirque du Soleil and concerts by artists such as Billy Joel, Carrie Underwood, Dave Matthews Band, P!NK and many others.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Scripps News.

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