Thousands of people in New Zealand are now replacing their bank cards after the international sales company suffered from a global security breach earlier this year.
The data breach was first announced in June by Ticketmaster. It was discovered after malicious software was found at Inbenta Technologies, a third-party support product. Ticketmaster users around the world were warned to monitor their bank accounts for evidence of financial or identity fraud if they had purchased tickets between September 2017 and June 23, 2018.
While 40,000 users were affected in the UK, Ticketmaster said that other countries could be at risk as well. The information that could have been compromised included names, addresses, email addresses, as well as telephone numbers, payment details, and log-in details for Ticketmaster.com.
It was noted by security firm RiskIQ last month that the security breach was actually a part of a larger credit card-skimming operation by hackers Magecart. The breach hit more than 800 e-commerce sites online, and while Ticketmaster claimed that the breach only affected four of its websites, RiskIQ listed 17 Ticketmaster sites that were affected from February to June. The security firm said that Magecart compromised Ticketmaster sites not just in the UK, but in Ireland, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand.
Just last week, a customer of Westpac bank in New Zealand told Stuff she was alerted that someone had attempted to take $14,000 out of her account.
“My credit card has got quite a large amount on it and I just used it and didn’t think about that really,” she said. “Especially because you go through those secure sites, you would think [they were safe].”
Since this incident, Tiffany Ryan, Westpac NZ’s head of Financial Crime and Security, announced that they would replace 30,000 customer bank cards.
“While the risk is low, Westpac NZ is in the process of proactively replacing around 30,000 cards, where we have concerns that a customer’s card details may have been compromised,” she said.
If anyone seemed to have discovered suspicious activity on their accounts, then the bank would reimburse customers and replace their card. Ryan noted that although the company has “strong fraud controls in place,” they wanted to take an extra step to protect their customers and “provide them with peace of mind around this issue.”
