Study: Ticketmaster UK data breach the “tip of the iceberg”

Research has shown that last month’s Ticketmaster UK data breach – during which the company warned Australian customers to beware as a safety precaution – was the “tip of an iceberg” of a major credit card scam.

Research company RiskIQ claims that the breach was bigger than what the global ticketing company first thought.

It revealed that the scam, a “threat group” called Magecart, has been running since 2015 and affected at least 800 e-commerce sites and millions of their customers.

Yonathan Klijnsma of RiskIQ, said Magecart has a larger reach “than any other credit card breach to date and isn’t stopping any day soon.”

He added, “The Magecart problem extends to e-commerce sites well beyond Ticketmaster, and we believe it’s cause for far greater concern.”

Magecart targets software companies that build and provide code that developers include on their websites to improve the site or customer experience.

Hacking into each third-party code supplier can get “nearly 10,000 victims instantly,” said RiskIQ.

Ticketmaster UK last month explained that customer payment data was threatened after Inbenta Technologies, the Silicon Valley-based customer support software company which ran the code on its websites, was hacked.

An unknown third party received the names, mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, payment details, and Ticketmaster logins of the customers of its sites as Ticketmaster International, Getmein!, and TicketWeb.

Ticketmaster said at the time, “The data breach affected international and UK customers but no one in North America.”

But RiskIQ has found that the North American site had additionally been affected, as the code hosted by social analysis company SociaPlus was also breached.

Customers of 100 large brands (unspecified in the report) had their data skimmed as they entered the checkout.

“Personally, I don’t trust a single online store anymore,” Klijnsma said.

“Every single one of them could have their supply chain of functionality suppliers compromised.”