Data stolen from third-party ticketing platform AudienceView affects multiple institutions, including McMaster University
On Feb. 27, software company and cloud-based ticketing platform AudienceView issued a Notice of Security Incident email concerning a data breach affecting customers who purchased tickets to athletic events in the month of February. Following the announcement, McMaster University announced that online ticket sales through the platform would be suspended.
In their email, AudienceView stated that suspicious activity related to their Campus product was discovered on Feb. 21. Sensitive information, including users’ names, billing and shipping addresses, emails, phone numbers and credit card information, may have been compromised.
Jovan Popovic / Sports Editor
An investigation conducted by the company determined that a data breach and malware attack had impacted customers and their purchases from Feb. 17 to Feb. 21.
Between Feb. 17-21, ticket sales were made for events including the men and women’s basketball games against Waterloo (Feb. 17) and Toronto (Feb. 18), the women’s basketball OUA quarterfinal, the men and women’s volleyball OUA quarterfinals and the U Sports men’s volleyball championship tournament packages.
“Upon becoming aware of this incident, [AudienceView] immediately took steps to remove the malware, secure our systems, and launched a full investigation with the assistance of third-party forensics specialists,” stated chief financial officer of AudienceView Gord Dyer in the email.
“Upon becoming aware of this incident, [AudienceView] immediately took steps to remove the malware, secure our systems, and launched a full investigation with the assistance of third-party forensics specialists,”
Gord Dyer, CFO of AudienceView
The company encouraged users who purchased tickets between this time period to monitor their account statements to protect against identity theft and credit card fraud.
In their email, AudienceView also provided an activation code for TransUnion, a consumer credit reporting agency. The code provides a free, 12-month subscription that gives users access to TransUnion’s online monitoring services to help secure their information and privacy.
These services contain features such as daily credit reports and credit score analyses, credit monitoring alerts, identity restoration, identity theft insurance and dark web monitoring. Users will need to redeem the activation code by June 30 in order to enroll with TransUnion.
“We have implemented additional security measures to further protect against similar incidents occurring in the future. We also reported this incident to federal law enforcement and are cooperating with their investigation,” said Dyer in the notice.
On Feb. 28, McMaster announced they would be halting the use of AudienceView for online ticket sales. McMaster posted on the Marauders website that they have notified authorities and contacted students through an email on Mar. 2.
In the email, Shawn Burt, director of the department of athletics and recreation, described the cause of the data breach as a “vulnerability in AudienceView’s systems”.
Burt also stated that the university had severed its connections with AudienceView through University Technology Services and was in the process of reviewing McMaster’s vendor agreement to help prevent further risks to users’ personal information.
Other educational institutions have also paused ticket sales through the AudienceView platform, including the University of Saskatchewan, SUNY Oswego, Brock University and the University of New Orleans.
With AudienceView currently down, users can still buy tickets for home playoff games, such as the men’s volleyball semifinal against York on Mar. 4, through Fusion, the system used by the department of athletics and recreation for recreational sales. Tickets may also be bought in-person at the box office inside the David Braley Athletic Centre two hours before the game.
With AudienceView currently down, users can still buy tickets for home playoff games, such as the men’s volleyball semifinal against York on Mar. 4, through Fusion, the system used by the department of athletics and recreation for recreational sales.
Users can contact AudienceView through their email, [email protected] or [email protected], and their assistance line at 1-833-806-1882. Additionally, questions related to purchasing tickets through the temporary Fusion system can be emailed to [email protected]. For upcoming games, tickets can be purchased here.
