Ticketmaster fined $10 million for hacking rival business

The American ticket sales and distribution giant hired an employee who formerly worked for Ticketmaster’s rival company, according to the Department of Justice

Ticketmaster must pay a hefty $10 million fine after several employees utilized unlawfully obtained passwords to hack a rival company’s computer systems – in attempts to “choke off” its business.

The American ticket sales and distribution giant, which is owned by Live Nation, in 2013 hired an employee who formerly worked for Ticketmaster’s rival company, according to the Department of Justice (DoJ) last week.

This co-conspirator illegally retained credentials from the rival firm, which he and other Ticketmaster executives then used to hack into the victim company’s systems. From there, they were able to monitor the company’s draft ticketing web pages, allowing them to find out which artists planned to use the rival company to sell tickets. They were also able to hack into and snoop on the company’s Artist Toolbox, a password-protected app that provides real-time data about ticket sales.

According to court documents, the former senior employee of the victim company worked there between May 2010 and July 2012. In 2012, he signed a separation agreement with the victim company upon leaving, in which he agreed to maintain the confidentiality of that company’s sensitive data, before joining Live Nation in August 2013.

In 2013, this former employee shared with former Ticketmaster head of the Artist Services division the URLs for draft ticketing web pages of the victim company, which were not public.

In response to a Ticketmaster executive explaining that the goal was to ‘choke off [victim company]’ and ‘steal back one of [the victim company]’s signature clients,’ co-conspirator 1 offered that Ticketmaster could ‘cut [victim company] off at the knees’ if they could win back presale ticketing business for a second major artist that was a client of the victim company, according to the DoJ.