More GoT episodes could be leaked on Sunday

Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab termed the incident a new phenomenon as far as cyber crimes go. “The HBO attack was relatively a new phenomenon. At first and throughout the 90s and early 2000s, most hackers intended primarily on vandalism attacks rather than for making money. But with time, it became clear that cyber attacks could bring with them serious money. The value of such a cyber hack is entirely dependent on how much attention it can bring. Hacking into HBO and stealing Game of Thrones piggybacks on one of the most active talking points in the world. Entertainment companies are like governments and hacking groups in that their intellectual property is of interest to everyone,” said Altaf Halde, MD, Kaspersky Lab.

There were fears among HBO’s employees of their personal data having been accessed by the hackers, but the company denied the notion. 

“At this time, we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised, but the forensic review is ongoing,” Richard Plepler, President and CEO, HBO, said earlier this week. However, according to Variety.com, a security contractor hired by HBO to scrub search results for the leaked data from Google revealed in a filing on Tuesday that the hackers got their hands on “thousands of internal documents”. 

The hacker group on Monday had leaked 1.5TB of HBO’s data including the script of the next episode of Game of Thrones and unreleased episodes of Ballers and Room 104 -- two of HBO’s other shows, after which the TV network started an investigation in the matter. 

Meanwhile, after mobile comparison website Smartprix on Friday spotted a direct link to the MP4 of Episode 4 of Game of Thrones Season 7 at Star India’s own distribution site in a separate data breach, the company has said it was investigating the incident. “We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner’s end to swiftly determine the cause. This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action,” a Star India spokesperson said in a statement. According to The Verge, Star India’s logo appears throughout the episode that was leaked on the internet.