Last week, the fourth episode of Game of Thrones season 7 leaked early. The culprit appeared to be Star India, the channel that airs the show in India. Now, there’s been a new development.
Indian outlet Mid-day.com reports that Abhishekh Ghadiyal and Mohammed Suhail have been fingered as being behind the leak. Ghadiyal and Suhail both work for Prime Focus Technologies, an Andheri-based firm that stores episodes of Game of Thrones on its servers so they can be streamed on Hotstar, which is owned by Star India.
After news of the leak broke, Prime Focus Technologies started an internal inquiry and found that someone had accessed its servers without authorization. The company ID number of the person who stole the episode belonged to Ghadiyal. Later, the stolen data was sent out using Suhail’s email address. Prime Focus made a formal complaint to the police alleging that the two employees had engaged in “criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant,” “common intention,” “damage to computer, computer system, etc.” and “computer related offences” in violation of the Information Technology Act of 2000. At this time, Mid-day reports that Ghadiyal and Suhail have been “booked.”
It’s good to see that there’s been a swift response to the leak. However, we remind everybody that the leak of “The Spoils of War” had nothing to do with the massive cyber-attack HBO recently suffered, a story that’s still ongoing. So the network has a ways to go before it can get comfortable.
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