Just after leaking, upcoming episodes of ‘Ballers’, ‘Room 104’, and a script of the Season 7, episode 4 of ‘Game of Thrones’, the hackers say they have yet to release more, unless their demands are met. The hacking group which just hacked HBO is now demanding millions in ransom after stealing a script of an unaired episode of Game of Thrones. The hackers claim to have stolen about 1.5 terabytes of confidential information from HBO.
The group has just released, now for the third time, sets of documents, which include executive emails and a detailed script of Season 7, Episode 5 of ‘Game of Thrones’ that has been set to be aired on August 13. The group has also leaked numerous HBO internal documents, which include financial balance sheets, marketing-strategy PDFs, employment agreements, emails, and the script of ‘Game of Thrones’. All the documents were watermarked with the phrase “HBO is Falling”. After the dump of half-gigabyte of stolen HBO data, the group is now black mailing the entertainment giant to give millions of dollars to the group or else they will drop more leaks to the public. The deadline for HBO to meet all the demands is three days.
Calling themselves, white hats and going by the pseudo, “Mr. Smith”, the hacking group sent a video to HBO President and CEO Richard Plepler, mandating his “six month salary in Bitcoin”- almost 6 million- if the company does not comply the group with continue the leak. At the end of the video, the group displayed an image of the villain, “Night King”, from Game of Thrones with his arms raised, with the words “standing” and falling” in each hand.
In the video, “Mr. Smith” stated the following:
“We successfully breached into your huge network. HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with, but we succeeded (it took about 6 months),”
…
“Our demand is clear and Non-Negotiable: We want XXXX dollars to stop leaking your Data. HBO spends 12 million for Market Research and 5 million for GOT7 advertisements. So consider us another budget for your advertisements!”
After receiving numerous questions and concerns about the HBO email system, Plepler sent out an email to the HBO staff last week: “Many people have expressed particular concern about our e-mail system. At this time, we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised, but the forensic review is ongoing.”
As HBO conducts a forensic review of the attack, HBO spokesperson, Jeff Cusson, says HBO is working along cyber security firms and law enforcement to settle this hack.
