Ticketmaster warns Australian customers of possible data breach

Australian customers may be affected by a Ticketmaster data breach, the company has revealed.

The ticket vendor has blamed “malicious software on a customer support product hosted by Inbenta Technologies” for the possible data breach.

“As soon as we discovered the malicious software, we disabled the Inbenta product across all Ticketmaster websites,” Ticketmaster said. “Less than 5% of our global customer base has been affected by this incident. Customers in North America have not been affected.”

At the moment, the company believes only the data of some UK customers may be affected.

The company said that “some of our customers' personal or payment information may have been accessed by an unknown third-party”. That data could include an individual’s name, address, email address, telephone number, payment details and login details.

Ticketmaster has contacted customers it believes may have been affected by the breach, which it discovered on 23 June. It believes that UK customers who either purchased or attempted to purchase tickets between February and June 23 may be affected.

International customers, including Australians, who purchased or attempted to purchase tickets between September 2017 and 23 June may also be caught up in the breach, however.

A page touting Ticketmaster as an Inbenta customer has been pulled from the tech company’s website.

Computerworld understands that the breach relates to a chatbot service.

Ticketmaster UK in August 2016 announced that it had launched a chat widget based on Ibenta's natural language processing platform. (Ticketmaster and Live Nation have used Ibenta’s natural language search and instant answers products in more than 25 countries.)

“Forensic teams and security experts are working around the clock to understand how the data was compromised,” Ticketmaster said.

“We are working with relevant authorities, as well as credit card companies and banks.”

Ticketmaster Australia has established a website for customers with details of the breach.

Ibenta has been contacted for comment.

Australian HR SaaS provider PageUp earlier this month revealed details of a data breach.