“We won’t be intimidated by criminal threats”
There’s been a lot of hacking going around recently. But in Ticketfly’s case, it came with a healthy dose of blackmail. On Thursday, the ticket company was hacked, losing a significant amount of sensitive data.
Late Wednesday night, customers started reporting some weird behavior from Ticketfly’s site. The site loaded a stock image from V for Vendetta, along with a line of text; “Ticketfly HacKeD By IsHaKdZ. Your Security Down im Not Sorry.”
Reportedly, IsHaKdZ found an exploit in Ticketfly’s site, and tried reporting it to employees. Motherboard saw the emails between him and the employees. IsHaKdZ asked for 1 bitcoin (roughly $7,600 as of this writing) for protection; when he didn’t get what he wanted, he used the exploit against them.
according to IsHaKdZ, he is in possession of a number of databases, containing the personal information of both customers and venue employees. The information includes names, addresses, emails addresses and phone numbers. the hacker is currently threatening to release a database titled “backstage” if his demands aren’t met.
Ticketfly concedes that data has been stolen. A spokesperson gave this statement to Gizmodo:
We’ve determined that Ticketfly.com has been the target of a cyber incident. Out of an abundance of caution, we have taken all Ticketfly systems temporarily offline as we continue to look into the issue. We realize the gravity of this decision, but the security of client and customer data is our top priority. We are working tirelessly, and in coordination with leading third party forensic experts, to get our clients back up and running.
While their site has been down since Thurday, they plan on keeping their customers’ faith. Since those customers can’t access their tickets online, they have a workaround in progress. They’ll be providing a printed list to venues, so that they can check off ticketholders as they enter. Granted, it’s not perfect; if the person in question bought the ticket, they’ll need valid ID to prove their identity. If the ticket was bought for them however, say as a present, they’ll need the credit card used for the purchase, a photocopy of the buyer’s ID, and written authorization from the buyer to get in.
That said, a spokesperson gave the following statement today:
In consultation with leading third-party forensic and cybersecurity experts, we are in the process of bringing the Ticketfly ticketing system back online with the security of our clients and fans top of mind. We are grateful for the outpouring of support our community has shown us while we continue to work through this cyber incident.
Source: Gizmodo
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