The sixth edition of Mad Cool will be held from July 6-8 in Madrid. SUR

Data of thousands of Mad Cool festival goers breached after 'computer failure'

The incident occurred when people who had purchased tickets for a festival in Madrid on July 6, 7 and 8 received a mass email to download their passes and request an event wristband be sent to them

Javier Varela

Madrid

Friday, 14 April 2023, 12:47

Personal details of thousands of Mad Cool festival-goers have been exposed after a data breach on Tuesday morning of this week. The incident occurred while people who had purchased tickets for a festival on July 6, 7 and 8 received a mass email from Ticketmaster to download their passes and request an event wristband be sent to them.

Diana Aceves took to Twitter to voice her concern after she went to fill in a form to have her wristbands sent but noticed other people’s details were appearing instead.

"You have a bug that allows you to see entries that are not yours and other people's details,” she wrote.

“None of these are me, and every time I click on 'View details' and 'View entries' I see someone different.”

Any user could change the addresses that appeared; "I think I could change the addresses of all the people I get and have the wristbands sent to me. But I'm not going to try," she said.

Ticketmaster and Mad Cool closed access to the website for 24 hours until they solved the bug. Ticketmaster Spain explained that "the technical problem that has affected the confirmation of data for Mad Cool 2023 wristbands is unrelated to Ticketmaster" and that they "act as an intermediary between promoters and fans, but Ticketmaster is not responsible for the computer error".

The Mad Cool festival organisers issued a statement in which they pointed to the "external company responsible for the programming, management and operation of this platform" as being responsible for an internal failure that caused the partial exposure of data.

They said it was caused by "a microcaching carried out by the server where the form is hosted after a DNS migration".

The sixth edition of Mad Cool, to be held from July 6-8 in Madrid, includes names such as Liam Gallagher, Robbie Williams, Sam Smith, Mumford & Sons and The Prodigy, who will be accompanied by the American rock of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Black Keys.