Cyber-theft hits eBay's Stubhub

Stubhub allows users to buy and sell tickets to Lady Gaga concerts and other events

The online ticket resale service Stubhub has revealed that fraudsters broke into the accounts of more than 1,000 of its customers and made purchases without their permission.

It is the second breach to have been disclosed by the business's parent company, eBay, this year.

However, in this latest case the firm said its servers had not been hacked.

Instead, it indicated, the thieves had used IDs obtained from other attacks.

Stubhub spokesman Glenn Lehrman said that the company had worked with law enforcement officers across the globe after being alerted to the problem.

"To be clear, there have been no intrusions into Stubhub system," he said.

"The arrests today relate to fraudulent transactions that were detected on existing Stubhub customer accounts in 2013.

"These legitimate customer accounts were accessed by cybercriminals who had obtained the customers' login and password either through data breaches of other websites and retailers, or through the use of key-loggers and/or other malware on the customer's own PC.

"Once fraudulent transactions were detected on a given account, customers were immediately contacted by Stubhub's trust and safety team, who refunded any unauthorized transactions, and assisted the customer with changing their password to secure their account from further activity."

However, he did not disclose how much money was involved.

The Manhattan district attorney's office is expected to hold a news conference later in the day to provide more detail.

The Associated Press news agency reported that officials from City of London Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the US Secret Service would attend to provide information about arrests.

EBay made users change their passwords to its main online marketplace in May after revealing hackers had accessed a database containing names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.

It said at the time that it had no evidence of that attack resulting in unauthorised activity on its members' accounts.

Stubhub has been in operation since 2000 as an authorised ticket reselling service