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22nd Jan 2017

Sundance film festival briefly forced to shut down after cyberattack

Conor Heneghan

We’re sure the fact that a documentary about state-sponsored doping in Russia was on the programme was surely a coincidence.

The Sundance film festival, one of the biggest and most prestigious film festivals in the world, was subject to a cyberattack on Saturday which briefly shut down the box office at the festival in Park City, Utah.

Tweets from the official Sundance account confirmed that it had been subject to a cyberattack on Saturday, which is believed to have taken place shortly after 12pm.

The cyberattack forced the closure of the box office at the festival, but normal service was resumed approximately 40 minutes later.

Commenting on the cyberattack, a Sundance spokesperson told Variety: “Sundance Film Festival has been subject to a cyberattack, causing network outages that have shut down our box office.

“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.”

It is not known whether the attack was in any linked with a women’s march protesting the presidency of Donald Trump, led by Chelsea Handler, in Park City at around the same time as the cyberattack.

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