This past summer, an unidentified someone or someones hacked into HBO, stole tons of data, released episodes of select shows, and demanded HBO pay him a ransom lest he release more. Now, that someone has been identified and charged.
The guilty party is Behzad Mesri, an Iranian man who once worked for Iran’s military mounting cyber attacks on the government of Israel, according to an indictment filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. According to NBC News, the indictment doesn’t charge Mesri with working for the Iranian military when he carried out the attacks on HBO.
In a press conference, acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim did his best Arya Stark impression when he proclaimed that “winter has come for Behzad Mesri.”
While I can appreciate Mr. Kim’s use of Game of Thrones lingo, I find it hard to keep a straight face when a person of authority uses a fantasy genre slogan to threaten a hacker half a world away.
Mesri, who goes by the online name of Skote Vahshat, used HBO user accounts to access its servers, which gave him the ability to steal several episodes of shows like Ballers and Room 104, plus the script for an episode of Game of Thrones season 7. He then began his campaign against HBO, demanding $5.5 million in Bitcoin.
While Mesri is a free man in his own country, Kim pointed out that the FBI decided to go public with this information after they concluded that it was unlikely they were going to lure him out into the open. “[Mesri] will never be able to travel outside of Iran without fear of being arrested and brought here to face these charges,” Kim said. And if Kim’s warning holds true, Mesri will now be on the FBI’s most wanted list, meaning he’ll have to spend the rest of his life having to look over his shoulder for the vengeful Starks of Winterfell law enforcement professionals.
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