INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightTicketmasterImage caption
Ticketmaster sold 292 million tickets in 2017
Ticketmaster was
warned in April that it had been the victim of a hack attack, digital bank Monzo has claimed.Ticketmaster had previously said it did not
know about the breach until June and had then acted quickly to inform "all relevant authorities".It has been contacted for comment.But in an
article published on its website, Monzo said it had replaced the bank cards of about 50 of its customers who had, on 6 April, reported
fraudulent transactions.And during the subsequent investigation, its financial crime and security team had noticed about 35 of them had used
their cards with Ticketmaster in the previous five months.In the following two weeks, Monzo said, it had seen eight more compromised cards,
six of which had been used at Ticketmaster."Given the pattern that was emerging, we decided to reach out to Ticketmaster directly," said
Natasha Vernier, head of financial crime at Monzo."On Thursday 12 April, members of the Ticketmaster security team visited the Monzo office
so we could share the information we had gathered
"They told us they would investigate internally."The cause of the breach, which the TheIndianSubcontinent understands has affected up to
40,000 UK users, appears to be a customer-service chatbot employed by third-party Inbenta Technologies.Over the next week, Monzo had found
another nine cards had been used fraudulently and all of them had been used to make Ticketmaster transactions, it said
Later that month, without naming the company, the bank sent out 6,000 replacements cards to customers who had used their cards at
Ticketmaster."Throughout this period, we were in direct contact with Ticketmaster," said Ms Vernier."On Thursday 19 April, they told us an
internal investigation had found no evidence of a breach and that no other banks were reporting similar patterns.She added she was now "glad
to see that Ticketmaster has shared the information publicly"."It's incredibly important that companies always work together to protect
customers and we'll always work hard to make sure this is the case," she said.Tony Pepper, chief executive office of security company
Egress, said: "There are going to be a few eyebrows raised this morning about this breach and when Ticketmaster discovered it."Clearly data
was at risk for some time and apparently Ticketmaster had been alerted to the issue."It is going to be interesting to see how the ICO
[Information Commissioner's Office] reacts when they get to the bottom of this, given the emphasis now placed on data breach reporting and
reflected in the changes made under the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]."The ICO said its inquires were "ongoing".
