Recently, HBO suffered a cyber-security hack. The hackers, who went by the name little.finger66, released this mission statement to select journalists:
Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening. What’s its name? Oh I forget to tell. Its HBO and Game of Thrones……!!!!!! You are lucky to be the first pioneers to witness and download the leak. Enjoy it & spread the words. Whoever spreads well, we will have an interview with him. HBO is falling.
Real champions, these folk.
Anyway, the story has taken another turn. The Hollwyood Reporter reports that the person or people behind the hack provided them with a publicly accessible link to a cache full of documents. Those documents include “a month’s worth of emails from the inbox of one of the company’s executives.” There were also nine files with labels like “Confidential” and “Script GOT7.” The “Confidential” file contained information on casting, marketing, and a detailed description of “Eastwatch,” the next episode of season 7.
The hackers also included a video letter to HBO CEO Richard Plepner, which rolls out as a scroll over “ominous” music. “We successfully breached into your huge network,” the message reads. “HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with but we succeeded (it took about 6 months).”
God, these people sound like the absolute worst…Anyway, they want HBO to pay them, although we’re not sure how much. We’re also not sure how valuable the information they have is to HBO. When Sony Pictures was hacked, the leaked emails resulted in the ouster of chairperson Amy Pascal, but who knows if the HBO emails are similarly inflammatory? Also, speaking to THR, an HBO spokesperson said that while “a number of emails have been made public, the review to date has not given us a reason to believe that our e-mail system as a whole has been compromised.”
Also, we can’t help but notice that there’s no mention of leaked episodes, which would surely be the thing that would anger HBO the most. “The Spoils of War” leaked ahead of time, but oddly enough, it had nothing to do with the hack. That’s hardly good for HBO, but it might increase their bargaining power with the hackers.
More on this exasperating story as it develops.
UPDATE: This exasperating story has developed. According to The Guardian, the hackers newest dump including the phone numbers and home addresses of several of the Game of Thrones cast members, including Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey and Emilia Clark. Welcome to the new low.
Per The Guardian, the hackers are demanding that HBO pay them their “six-month salary in bitcoin” — they say they earn between $12 to $15 million per year from blackmailing organizations. The Guardian also says that the latest leak includes 3.4 gigabytes worth of info. The hackers claim to have stolen 1.5 terabytes worth of data, meaning that, assuming they’re telling the truth, they have a lot more to release.
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