Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro at centre of contact detail ‘leak’
Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro at centre of contact detail ‘leak’
Jacob StolworthyMon, July 27, 2026 at 8:06 AM UTC
55
Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro were allegedly at centre of contact detail leak (Getty Images)
The Independent and Yahoo will earn a commission from purchases made via links in this article. Pricing and availability are subject to change.
Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese’s contact details were exposed in a data breach, according to a cybersecurity expert.
Jennifer Lawrence, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, Rami Malek, Sharon Stone, and directors George Lucas and Danny Boyle are also said to have been embroiled in the alleged leak last month.
The stars’ phone numbers and email addresses were reportedly revealed after a Tribeca Film Festival database, simply named “contacts”, was accidentally made public online, with Jeremiah Fowler, a researcher for Black Hills Information Security, claiming he discovered the document days before the festival started on 3 June.
Fowler told The Sun it was “by far the biggest collection of celebrity data I’ve ever seen”, and that he contacted organisers of the Tribeca Film Festival – a New York event founded by De Niro – to let them know.
He said: “There were many, many household names in the records who could have been targeted with malware. There were names, phone numbers and email addresses.
“What was really interesting was that there was a folder that captured their device information based off the email.
“It would say what version of an iPhone they were using, if they were using [web browser] Safari, what version of the software they were using. That could give the bad guys a lot of additional information.”
Advertisement
Fowler said the festival swiftly removed the databases and told him it “takes matters of data security very seriously and is actively investigating this issue”.
The Independent has contacted Tribeca Film Festival for comment.
Martin Scorsese and Jennifer Lawrence were also allegedly embroiled in data leak (Getty Images)
Writing in a blog about his discovery, Fowler, who described himself as “an ethical security researcher”, said he didn’t download the data, but reviewed a limited number of records to verify and responsibly report on the nature of an exposure.
“My goal is to responsibly notify relevant parties and raise awareness about the importance of protecting potentially sensitive data,” he wrote.
De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival with Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2002, in a bid to help spur the cultural revival of Lower Manhattan after 9/11.
It hosts over 600 screenings annually and welcomes approximately 150,000 attendees.
In 2021, Graham Ivan Clark pleaded guilty to hacking X/Twitter accounts of high-profile figures, including Kim Kardashian West, Kanye West, Elon Musk and Barack Obama, in a Bitcoin scam. He was 17 at the time.
As part of the scam, the hacked celebrity accounts shared posts urging their followers to donate Bitcoin to Covid-relief projects.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
