Hackers demand millions in ransom for stolen Game of Thrones data after releasing upcoming episode synopsis as well as a month’s worth of emails from HBO vice president
Hackers on Monday released stolen HBO files and demanded ransom
Trove of stolen data synopsis of next week’s episode and month of stolen emails
Using the name ‘Mr Smith’ the hackers demand millions of dollars in Bitcoin
By KEITH GRIFFITH
DAILYMAIL.COM
8 August 2017
Hackers using the name ‘Mr Smith’ have posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online and demanded that HBO pay a ransom of several million dollars to prevent further releases.
The data dump on Monday included a strange video synopsis of the plot of next week’s episode of ‘Game of Thrones’, and a month’s worth of email from the account of Leslie Cohen, HBO’s vice president for film programming.
DailyMail.com is not reporting the detailed contents of the stolen data, including plot points of upcoming episodes.
The data dump also included internal documents, including a report of legal claims against the network and job offer letters to top executives.
‘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),’ the hackers wrote in a video message to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, which was also sent to the Hollywood Reporter.
HBO, which previously acknowledged the theft of ‘proprietary information,’ said it’s continuing to investigate and is working with police and cybersecurity experts.
The network said Monday that it still doesn’t believe that its email system as a whole has been compromised.
This is the second data dump from the purported hacker.
The leak of Sunday’s episode online two days before it aired was not related to to the hack, and instead originated from a distribution partner in India.
The Rest…HERE
