Ticketmaster is a company well known for their cheap deals, great customer services and wide clientele. If you’re desperate to see the biggest band in town, or the smallest, they likely have the ticket you’re after. Concert goers down under, in Australia, have been asked to double and triple check their bank accounts for any signs of suspicious activity.
This comes as one of the leading online booking services, Ticketmaster, was undoubtedly hacked over the past few weeks. The ticketing giants best advice was to do this as, simply a precaution. This means that they do not fully believe that people in Australia and New Zealand have even been affected. However, thousands upon thousands of customers are being strongly urged to get in touch with their bank providers and check for discrepancies.
The cyber attack was carried out on the ticket sellers British operations, which had a knock on effect to Australian and New Zealand customers in the long run. Roughly 40,000 peoples data was breached, all of whom use the UK Ticketmaster’s website to purchase tickets. This is thought to have been the result of the malicious software currently used in Ticketmaster’s customer support services. This piece of software is provided by another company and seems to be the most logical place to place blame.
One of Ticketmaster’s spokesmen detailed that an email explaining the exact circumstances would be sent directly to customers who they feel are at risk. They went on to say “There are no confirmed incidents outside the UK, however out of precaution we have approached customers in a number of territories, which includes Australia and New Zealand. We have no reason to believe they have been affected here in Australia or New Zealand.”.
Ticketmaster themselves found out about this happening the previous Saturday as some malicious software had been embedded into one of their customer support products. These are currently hosted by Inbenta Technologies. Inbenta Technologies say that an unknown hacker got hold of customers payment and personal information.
The company are reaching out to say the following “As a result of Inbenta’s product running on Ticketmaster International websites, some of our customers’ personal or payment information may have been accessed by an unknown third-party,” they continue in their statement to say that, “Forensic teams and security experts are working around the clock to understand how the data was compromised. We are working with relevant authorities, as well as credit card companies and banks.”.
Whilst this may seem like a dreadful setback to a lot of online ticket purchasing platforms, Ticketmaster’s reach is wide and it seems to be an issue that will be forgotten about quite quickly. Their audience stretches worldwide and Ticketmaster have become somewhat of a household name, only 5% of their global customer base is now considered as being affected by the malicious cyber attack, something other companies can only dream of saying. With that being said, this should not be taken lightly and an investigation into exactly what happened should take place sooner rather than later.
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