Ticketmaster’s UK grass roots ticketing service TicketWeb is investigating how spammers managed to infiltrate its mailing list system this weekend, sending out phishing emails to an undisclosed number of people on its database.
In an email to all TicketWeb’s UK users, the company said: “We have discovered that our TicketWeb UK direct email marketing system was exposed to unauthorised access. As a result, you may have received up to four emails on Saturday, February the 11th, from an unauthorised party with the subject as ‘Action Required: Update Your PDF Application’ and containing a link to update an Adobe Acrobat PDF application. Please do not click this link, but delete the email”.
The company assured users that it had taken “immediate action to close the vulnerability” and that credit card data in the TicketWeb system had not been accessed during the attack. However, users who clicked the link in the email were asked to enter credit card details. TicketWeb urged anyone who did this to contact their card issuer immediately.
Speculating on the cause of the attack, a Ticketmaster insider told CMU that discovering its origin may be difficult, saying: “TicketWeb gives each of the venues which uses the service access to the mailing system, so the database could have been compromised from any third-party machine connected to the network, making it hard to identify the source of the problem”.
Sections: Music Business | Tags: Ticketmaster, TicketWeb
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