The Woodruff Arts Center's South entrance to the building that houses Symphony hall and the Alliance Theater.
The Woodruff Arts Center's South entrance to the building that houses Symphony hall and the Alliance Theater.

WAC hack!

Woodruff Arts Center experiences serious IT breach, still unresolved after a week.

Mark Gresham | 26 APR 2019

At the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s sold out concert Thursday evening, ticket-holding patrons experienced something unusual that was a throwback to earlier times: Their tickets were not electronically scanned upon entering the hall. That’s because the orchestra’s computer systems are down – including website, e-mail, telephones and even the ticket scanning system. Nor is the ongoing outage limited to the ASO: the IT system for the entire Woodruff Arts Center has been down since last Friday, April 19.

EarRelevant got initial word of the outage from the ASO via their MailChimp-hosted e-mail list, in a message sent at 4:35pm that day. That message read:

Due to technical difficulties, the ASO phone, web and email systems are currently down. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve these issues. Please reach out to us via social media with any questions, or email aso.information@atlantasymphony.org

One week later, WAC’s IT system is still down.

In a statement posted on a temporary home page at www.woodruffcenter.org, as viewed on Friday, April 26, the Woodruff Arts Center has written the following about the incident:

The Woodruff Arts Center, including the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art, recently experienced a network security incident from an unauthorized third-party that resulted in a significant IT outage and is affecting many operations and systems. Upon learning of the incident, we immediately took steps to secure our systems and began working to implement enhanced security measures. Our team also began an investigation and an outside forensics firm was engaged to assist us. We have notified law enforcement. Please note that we have no evidence that any personal or financial information has been accessed, and our review of this matter remains ongoing.

The Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art all continue to remain open for performances and visits as usual.

Tickets for select performances are available for purchase at the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office and High Museum of Art at 1280 Peachtree Street and through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.com).

EarRelevant will continue update the story for readers as it unfolds further and new information becomes available.

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