The Ticketmaster hack which occurred back in May is reportedly “far bigger” than initially thought.

At the time, it was reported that hacker group ShinyHunters had illegally obtained 1.3 TB of customer data, affecting 560 million users. The data breach allegedly included “full names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, ticket sales and event details, order information, and partial payment card data.”

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ShinyHunters previously claimed it accepted a “rushed” ransom offer of $1 million from Live Nation – Ticketmaster’s Parent company – but now states that it has assessed the hacked data and revised its demands. Ticketmaster refutes any claim that it paid out any money to ShinyHunters.

Cybersecurity outlet Hackread has shared screenshots taken from Breach Forums, where ShinyHunters shared an announcement on 4 July stating that it believed the data breach to be more valuable than originally thought, and that it has therefore risen its demand to $8 million.

The group claims it has obtained 193 million ticket barcodes, valued at over $22.6 billion in total, including 440,000 tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, plus 30 million more barcodes for 65,000 other events.

The ShinyHunters statement suggests that instead of Swift performing on her tour, she will be “performing in front of Congress” and goes on to state, “We found out how to make way more expensive and insurance surely accepts this; we restart negotiations at $8M let the negotiator and insurance know.”

On 6 July, Ticketmaster provided a statement regarding these claims to Hackread: “Ticketmaster’s SafeTix technology protects tickets by automatically refreshing a new and unique barcode every few seconds so it cannot be stolen or copied,” it begins.

“This is just one of many fraud protections we implement to keep tickets safe and unassailable. Some outlets are inaccurately reporting about a ransom offer. We were never engaged for a ransom and did not offer them money.”

As of 9 July, the BBC reports that it has seen emails sent by Ticketmaster to customers in North America warning them to take action. Emails were reportedly sent to Canadian customers, urging them to “be vigilant and take steps to protect against identity theft and fraud.” The outlet reports that Ticketmaster has not commented on the notification process, but says that similar emails have reportedly been sent to customers in the US and Mexico.

MusicTech has contacted Ticketmaster for further clarification on these emails.

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