'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Plot to Be Revealed? Hackers Threaten to Dump Rest of the Episodes Unless HBO Pays $7 Million
Last week's "Game of Thrones" season 7 episode leak seems to be just the beginning for HBO. Now, hackers who claim to have a trove of stolen information from the company are threatening to release more content from their shows unless they are paid a hefty ransom.
Going by the name of "Mr. Smith," the hackers demanded $7 million in Bitcoin from HBO in order to prevent the information from being released to the public. Alongside their threat was a 3.4 GB cache of other data they claim was stolen from HBO.
These include draft script of an upcoming "Game of Thrones" episode, a month's worth of emails, folders titled "Budgets," "Legal," and "Licensing and Retail," and contact information of some of the show's cast including Emilia Clarke, Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey.
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The demands were made via a video addressed to HBO's CEO, Richard Plepler. In a cruel joke, the video was also set to the tune of the "Game of Thrones'" opening theme. The video was also "peppered with misspellings and pop-culture references."
According to the hackers, it took six months to break into HBO's network and the consider the millions of dollars they are demanding as "salary." The group claimed they have stolen about 1 TB of data from HBO after breaching the network's back in July.
They also claimed that they make about $12 to $15 million annually from blackmailing which means that the money from the network will only consist half their payday. HBO has three days to pay the ransom and according to the hackers, should the deadline pass, they will dump all the information onto the internet.
The FBI and the cyber security firm Mandiant are already working with HBO to get to the bottom of the issue. Mandiant was also the one who investigated the 2014 Sony hacking which was allegedly perpetrated by North Korea.
This is by far the worst cyber-attack on HBO since the one in 2015 where a huge chunk of "Game of Thrones" season 5 was leaked to the internet. The show currently has three episodes left with episode 5 "Eastwatch" to air this Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO.
