{"id":5009,"date":"2026-07-27T19:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5009"},"modified":"2026-07-27T19:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:08:14","slug":"massive-tribeca-fest-data-leak-exposes-jennifer-lawrence-robert-de-niro-and-more-celebs-contact-info-meet-the-man-who-discovered-the-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5009","title":{"rendered":"Massive Tribeca Fest Data Leak Exposes Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and More Celebs\u2019 Contact Info; Meet the Man Who Discovered the Files"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tThe Tribeca Festival suffered a data leak that exposed hundreds of thousands of records, as well as the contact information for thousands of celebrities, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie and festival co-founder Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5007\">Gold House Launches Gold House Studios, Unveiling A Slate Led By \u2018The Boys\u2019 Star Karen Fukuhara (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tCybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler revealed the leak in an ExpressVPN blog post over the weekend, claiming he\u2019d uncovered a total of 666,369 exposed records with timestamps ranging from 2019 to 2026. Fowler, who works for Black Hills Information Security, publishes blogs on ExpressVPN and previously did cybersecurity for a software company in Kyiv, Ukraine, took time away from his European vacation to speak with <em>Variety<\/em> about discovering the data leak.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been a security researcher for about 15 years and I\u2019m always looking for exposed data,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve used a lot of different APIs and tools. This one I found using an IoT search engine, which is basically Google for websites but for connected devices like nanny cams, medical equipment or cloud storage databases.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCo-founded in 2002 by De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff as a way to revitalize Lower Manhattan following the September 11 attacks, the fest takes place annually in New York City, and has played host to the premieres of everything from \u201cThe Avengers\u201d to \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale,\u201d while awarding films like \u201cLet the Right One In.\u201d Tribeca Festival\u2019s 2026 edition, marking its 25<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary, ran from June 3-14.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe festival issued a statement, with a spokesperson asserting, \u201cNone of the talent referenced in recent reporting had personal contact information disclosed. The vast majority of the information consisted of public-facing business contact information, including PR representatives, talent representatives, front office email addresses, information from the\u00a0Festival website, and other information that was already publicly available. All\u00a0information was removed promptly upon discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the majority of the Tribeca Festival data was not sensitive, consisting of things like marketing materials, press kits and promotional images, there was a backup .dump file that \u201ccontained potentially sensitive information,\u201d including a folder named \u201ccontacts\u201d that had 13,535 entries, including \u201cthe names, addresses, phone numbers and emails\u201d of prominent filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Ron Howard, and others, as well as popular actors such as De Niro, Lawrence, Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Rami Malek, Eva Mendes and Michael J. Fox. Fowler noted, however, that some of the contact fields were missing data or contained the contacts of assistants, managers or publicists in lieu of a personal email or phone number. (<em>Variety <\/em>is still awaiting comment from the Tribeca Festival, which disputed some of Fowler\u2019s findings by phone.)<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cNormally, when you back up something, you don\u2019t keep it in a production environment,\u201d he says of Tribeca\u2019s folly. \u201cYou either take it offline or put it in a separate database, that way it\u2019s your fail-safe in case something does go wrong. One document had around 135,000 contacts, and I\u2019m assuming these would be people who signed up for mailing lists and people that go to events. The celebrities were in something called \u2018contacts,\u2019 and that had around 13,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe adds, \u201c[Tribeca] kind of disputed that some \u2014 not all \u2014 of the contacts may have been managers or assistants, but I saw a lot of consumer email accounts, like Google or Yahoo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5005\">Savannah Guthrie Posts New Video Urging Mother\u2019s Kidnappers to \u2018Do the Right Thing\u2019: \u2018Tell Us Where to Look for Her\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tAccording to Fowler, the Tribeca Festival committed \u201ca human error of leaving the backup file in the database, and the backup file was in plain text, unencrypted.\u201d If it was encrypted, he wouldn\u2019t have been able to access it. But every one of the data points, he explains, was available to anyone with an internet connection, so anyone could create an account with a IoT search engine and view the data in a browser like Chrome, Firefox or Safari.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhile the Tribeca Festival made a mistake in leaving the data exposed, Fowler commended the actions the fest took in the wake of his revelations, admitting the fest \u201cresponded very fast and professionally.\u201d Plus, he \u201cdidn\u2019t see any evidence of anyone else accessing it,\u201d since normally data that\u2019s been exposed for a lengthy period of time would come with automatic ransomware posts requesting various amounts of bitcoin, and those weren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe warns that exposing people\u2019s personal data, such as email accounts, poses an even bigger threat in the era of AI, which has democratized hacking.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe creativity level of criminals has shot up beyond anything. AI gives anyone the ability to do things that non-technical people couldn\u2019t do before,\u201d he reasons. \u201cNow, you can feed it information and ask it to create a phishing email. You could use Claude, ask it to create malware, insert it in a document saying, \u2018Check out this script!\u2019 and send it to 135,000 people, and somebody\u2019s going to open it. It\u2019s a very, very big issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAs a seasoned cybersecurity researcher, Fowler maintains that his mission isn\u2019t to embarrass companies, but rather show them where their vulnerabilities lie and get them to improve their cybersecurity so that their information doesn\u2019t fall into the wrong hands in the future.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe purpose of my report and findings are not to throw organizations under the bus,\u201d he says. \u201cOrganizations that do have a data incident statistically don\u2019t have another one for three to five years since it becomes a primary focus and you dedicate the resources to penetration testing and vulnerability scans. It happens often, especially in industries unrelated to technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=5003\">\u2018Resident Evil,\u2019 \u2018Ghosts,\u2019 \u2018Walking Dead\u2019 and More Stars Geek Out on Comic-Con\u2019s Biggest Panels<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tribeca Festival suffered a data leak that exposed hundreds of thousands of records, as well as contact information for thousands of celebrities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2019,1562,410,1170],"class_list":["post-5009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-angelina-jolie","tag-jennifer-lawrence","tag-robert-de-niro","tag-tribeca-festival-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Massive Tribeca Fest Data Leak Exposes Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro and More Celebs\u2019 Contact Info; 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