Ticketmaster breached for months, personal data stolen by hackers

Ticketmaster has warned customers that their personal information may have been compromised, after malicious code was discovered running on its website. Up to 40,000 UK customers who purchased, or attempted to purchase, tickets between February and June 23, 2018 are thought to be affected. In addition, international customers who purchased, or attempted to purchase, tickets between September 2017 and June 23, 2018 may also be at risk.

Personal information compromised includes names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, payment details and login details. Which is all bad news of course, but how did the breach happen in the first place? It appears that the malware was introduced to Ticketmaster’s site via a piece of external third-party code from Inbenta, a technology company that provides online chatbot and support ticketing services for websites.

As soon as Ticketmaster recognised the issue it disabled Inbenta’s code across all of its websites. In a statement, Inbenta said that the source of the data breach was a “single piece of Javascript code” that had been customised specifically for Ticketmaster’s purposes. The code, Inbenta says, it is not in use on any other company’s websites.

Inbenta says it has now resolved the vulnerability, but not before attempting to pass some of the blame onto Ticketmaster for using its risky code on a payment page: Although it’s obviously trying to pass the buck, Inbenta certainly has a point. Embedding third-party Javascript onto an online payments page introduces risks. After all, if the third-party code gets compromised there is a danger that online criminals could use it to secretly steal payment card information.

Source: bitdefender.com