Tribeca Festival is facing an uncomfortable spotlight this week after a cybersecurity researcher revealed that an unsecured online database tied to the event exposed contact records for some of Hollywood's biggest names — including Jennifer Lawrence, festival co-founder Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman.
The leak was uncovered by Jeremiah Fowler, a researcher with Black Hills Information Security who regularly scans the internet for exposed databases as part of his work. Jeremiah says he stumbled onto the trove just days before this year’s festival kicked off on June 3, using a specialised search tool that scans for publicly accessible servers.
In total, Jeremiah says he found more than 666,000 records spread across several databases, with timestamps stretching all the way back to 2019. Much of it was harmless — marketing files, press kits, promotional photos. But buried inside was a backup file containing a folder simply labeled ‘contacts’, holding upwards of 13,500 entries with names, phone numbers, emails and addresses.
Among the names allegedly included: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Ron Howard, George Lucas and Danny Boyle on the directing side, and De Niro, Lawrence, Jolie, Freeman, Rami Malek, Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas, Neil Patrick Harris, Winona Ryder, Eva Mendes and Michael J. Fox among the acting ranks.
Jeremiah didn't mince words about the scale of what he found, telling one outlet it was, in his experience, an unusually large trove of celebrity data to see exposed in one place. He has said he did not download the records and reviewed only a limited sample before responsibly disclosing the exposure to festival organisers.
Festival organisers moved quickly to contain the narrative once the story broke. In a statement, a Tribeca spokesperson insisted that none of the talent named in the reporting had personal contact details disclosed, characterising the exposed material as largely public-facing business information — think PR reps, talent agencies and front-office contacts rather than stars’ private cell numbers. The festival also says the database was secured and the information pulled down promptly once Jeremiah flagged it.
That distinction matters, and it’s one even Jeremiah has acknowledged: many of the ‘contacts’ entries reportedly belonged to managers, agents and publicists rather than the celebrities themselves, and some fields in the database were incomplete.
Tribeca, co-founded by De Niro alongside Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2002 as part of Lower Manhattan's post-9/11 revival, just wrapped its 25th anniversary edition on June 14. The festival has not indicated whether it plans further review of its data security practices following the incident.
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