Slashdot Mirror
FBI Is Probing Sundance Cyberattack That Forced Box Office To Close (hollywoodreporter.com)
Over the weekend, the Sundance Film Festival was hacked. "Sundance Film Festival has been subject to a cyberattack, causing network outages that have shut down our box office," said a spokesperson for the festival. "No further information about the attack is available at this time, but our team is working hard to get our system back up and running as soon as possible. All screenings will still take place as planned." According to The Hollywood Reporter, the FBI is now investigating the hack and is working with Sundance officials to identify the culprit. From their report: Although the festival was able to get its ticketing systems back online within an hour of the Saturday breach, multiple other denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Sundance's IT infrastructure followed. A DDoS attack works by flooding the bandwidth or resources of a targeted server. A Sundance Film Festival rep offers the following statement: "The FBI is reviewing the case. 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." At the time of the hack, the festival offered little in the way of explanation of what happened, but hinted that filmmakers at the annual celebration of independent cinema may have been the target. One producer of a Sundance documentary critical of the Russian government believes his film could have played a role in the attack. "There's been speculation that our film may have sparked retribution," Icarus consulting producer Doug Blush tells THR. "It does not paint a flattering picture of [president Vladimir] Putin." Icarus, which made its world premiere at the festival the day before the hack, centers on a Russian doctor who oversaw and then spoke out about Russia's widespread state-sponsored sports doping. The Bryan Fogel-helmed film, which is being pitched to distributors, has played throughout the weekend in Park City at screenings for both press-and-industry and the public. Icarus isn't the only Sundance film that could antagonize the Russian government and Putin. Evgeny Afineevsky's Cries From Syria -- one of several docs tackling the war-torn nation -- also takes a critical look at Putin and Russia's military intervention in Syria. Cries From Syria made its world premiere at Sundance on Sunday, the day after the initial box-office cyberattack.
So "hacker" and "hacking" have entered popular language as meaning "criminals breaking into computers", but come on, this was a DDoS, an "attack" if you wish, but not a "hack" in any sense of the term.
Why don't *YOU* try to get your food by spearing a gazelle and then we *might* have a change at an intelligent discussion.
So we won't care about Russian meddling with our presidential elections... but we will with Russian meddling with arguably insignificant Hollywood back patting and ego stroking? Wow what great insight into this "great" country. Fuck us all and our backwards priorities.
I though Brian Krebs beat all the DDOSers with his marvelous reporting.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Time to jump on the "Russian Hackers did it" bandwagon.
For example:
I had a doctors appointment scheduled that I missed, the only way this could have happened is if Russian Hackers who hate health care hacked into my doctors system and changed the appointment so I would have to pay a missed visit fee. Now, time to tell the masses that we need to start a war so I can get my fee back!
Seriously though, why does the media seem to think that hacking the ticket site would this stop anyone from seeing the film critical of Russia? You do know there are other crazy people out there who hold a low opinion of Sundance (me for one, heck maybe I did it).
The 4chan crowd believes they're superior because they can... well, honestly I'm not sure what the 4chan crowd can do. I'd say they could probably manage a circle jerk, but then I imagine some of them would think an erection required pliers, and it would all go horribly wrong.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well we don't know about any of that, AC, but I think I can speak for everyone else when I say we know for sure that you, AC, are very proficient at sucking cock, and taking cock up the ass.
It was Robert DeNiro, I just know it. He got one of the employees from the dot-com startup he interned at to do it for him. :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
"He won't stand up for the oppressed!" said a multi-millionaire actress who pays her illegal-alien gardener minimum wage and doesn't know his last name.
We already know that the US intel community released a report where they lied about Russian hacking of the US elections.
So, why should I believe, again without proof, that the attack was from the Russian state?
It makes no sense. They wanted to bury the stories critical of Putin? Then they wouldn't hack Sundance; Streisand effect. But it makes sense in the continuing context of the US intel community trying to frame Russia to build the case with the public for a later war against them.
It just screams of setup; I have no reason to have confidence in the Hollywood Reporter's claims.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Then again, I'm sure the FBI will figure it out - probably during the final days of the 2020 presidential election.
... why is it always Russia?
Mama always liked Russia best.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Or incompetent system administrators.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Well, it looks a good idea to piggyback on anti-Russia hysteria to get news coverage on an obscure film that only specialists would have heard about. Well done!
Please, senior, our bestest indian village university priests teach a class of rocket science PhD. Only 3 months of classes. We take credit cards. And we offer PhD H1B at the bestest american firms. PhD CEO job at Microsoft for only three easy payments of $29.99.
Please revert us for the same, senior.
Sounds like the wires were still warm when the FBI got there (that's a metaphor of you can't tell) . Somebody at Sundance must have friends in high places. Brian Krebs had to do his own investigation when his site was hit by Mirai. I never read about govt involvement until 2 kids in Israel were detained.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Blame it on abysmal "system engineers". I mean -- if you can't fucking sell a ticket when the network is down, you're holding it wrong.
Of course, the pranksters/criminals are idiots and deserve some books thrown at them, but ffs, design robust systems in the first place.
"One producer of a Sundance documentary critical of the Russian government believes his film could have played a role in the attack."
Is there a contest on slashdot as to how to get the 'Russians' into a hacking story?
Color me skeptical.
It could be a real DDoS attack but most likely it's a normal business day. You have to realize this: Filmfestival ticket reservation systems are always DDoS'ed by nature. 30.000 people need tickets for the current day, and the ticket is available starting at a fixed time. 10am usually. So all those 30.000 set their alarm clocks and try to login and hit reload every 2 seconds to get into the system. The java backend server behind a varnish cache is too slow to handle all those concurrent attempts, because they are lame, and the festival has no money to upgrade a decent modern async server system SW. They go down every single year, with various ridiculous countermeasures. I'm a regular at such film festivals. I usually tricked the Sundance ticket system every year, by knowing exactly at which second when to hit enter once. Only the first 100-200 get a chance to see the movie. E.g. last year it was practically impossible to get an online ticket for the best movie of the year "Manchester by the sea". It got perfect ratings from the very first day on, like this years "Call me by your name". Thousands of people tried to get it, but I was unsuccessful for all 5 screenings. Same thing could have happened for "Call me by your name", which by all statistic measures is the biggest sensation ever since the latest Cannes rave 2012 by Jean-Luc Godard. https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.... vs https://cannes-rurban.rhcloud.... And I for sure wouldn't have stormed the ticket system for a crazy amateur Godard movie. But for the latest Italian Guadagnino movie with perfect 10 ratings all over and Arnie Hammer as homo, sure. Could have been a real ICMP or TCP flood attack also, but for what lame reason? The biggest reason is the big demand and horrible offer.