A cyber attack on the Sundance Film Festival that forced the closure of the festival’s box office on Saturday is now being reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a report.
“The FBI is reviewing the case,” a spokesperson for the Sundance Film Festival told Deadline. “At this point, we do not have any reason to believe the cyberattack was targeted towards a specific film. No artist or customer information was compromised.”
Sundance organizers took to Twitter Saturday morning to announce that the festival had been hacked: “We have been subject to a cyberattack that has shut down our box office. Our artist’s voices will be heard and the show will go on.”
We have been subject to a cyberattack that has shut down our box office. Our artist's voices will be heard and the show will go on.
— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) January 21, 2017
Less than an hour later, ticket purchasing systems were back online.
Update: Online ticketing for future shows is back up. #Sundance
— SundanceFilmFestival (@sundancefest) January 21, 2017
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the festival’s online infrastructure was also subject to repeated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
The week-long event in Park City, Utah — founded by actor Robert Redford — kicked off on January 19 with the world premiere of Al Gore’s global warming-themed sequel An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
The hack came just hours after talk show host Chelsea Handler led festival attendees and locals in the Women’s March on Main, a sister event of the Women’s March on Washington, held to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump.
“Sundance has always been a platform for change, not only for filmmakers and filmmaking but also for big ideas for the future,” Handler said of her involvement in the march. “If there’s anything I learned in the last year, it’s that we need to be louder and stronger than ever about what we believe in, so I joined some incredible women from around the country to bring our voices together in the streets of Park City.”
While the march took place in Park City, it was not sponsored by the festival. Earlier this week, Sundance founder Robert Redford said the festival tries to “actively stay away from politics.”
Sundance runs until January 29.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson
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