Hackers Steal Game of Thrones Script
HBO has been the target of a cyber-attack after an anonymous hacker boasted about leaking full episodes of upcoming shows, along with scripts for Game of Thrones.
The hack was announced to media via an anonymous email which claimed 1.5 terabytes of data from secure HBO networks was accessed.
Unaired episodes of “Ballers” and “Room 104” may have been published online, and the hacker vowed more would be “coming soon,” the magazine reported. In an email to Wired, the hackers claimed: “We successfully penetrated HBO’s huge network and gathered most imporatnt (sic) files and films & scripts”.
HBO has not revealed what data had been stolen but confirmed the attack took place.
In a statement, the network said: “HBO recently experienced a cyber incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information. We immediately began investigating the incident and are working with law enforcement and outside cybersecurity firms.”
HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler sent a note to employees about the incident.
“As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” he said.
“Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us. I can assure you that senior leadership and our extraordinary technology team, along with outside experts, are working round the clock to protect our collective interests.
“The efforts across multiple departments have been nothing short of herculean. It is a textbook example of quintessential HBO teamwork. The problem before us is unfortunately all too familiar in the world we now find ourselves a part of. As has been the case with any challenge we have ever faced, I have absolutely no doubt that we will navigate our way through this successfully.”
Now in its seventh season, the show aired its third of seven episodes on Sunday 30th July. In Australia, the show airs on Foxtel, ratings for yesterday’s episode are yet to be released. According to piracy figures relative to population, Brisbane is the second-largest city of downloaders of Game of Thrones, coming in behind Dallas, US. Chicago comes third, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is in at fourth and Seattle, USA rounds out the top five. Perth is in at sixth place. Phoenix, USA takes out seventh place, followed by Toronto, Canada while Athens, Greece claims ninth position and Guangzhou, China rounds out the top 10.
The data comes from BitTorrent-oriented research project “alpha60” which is the brainchild of Abigail De Kosnik, Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkley, and Benjamin De Kosnik, computer scientist and artist. TorrentFreak reports the goal of the project is to quantify and map BitTorrent activity around various media titles, to make this “shadow economy” visible to media scholars and the general public.
Their tracking software collected swarm data from 72 torrents that were released shortly after the first episode of Game of Thrones premiered and before being anonymized, the collected IP-addresses were translated to geographical locations, to reveal various traffic patterns. A five-day time-lapse of the worldwide swarm activity shows there is a lot of activity in Asia.
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