The hackers behind a massive intrusion into HBO systems have released a month’s worth of a senior HBO executive’s emails, dumping a “publicly accessible link to a cache of internal documents” which also included the script to yet another upcoming episode of Game of Thrones, Hollywood Reporter wrote today.
HBO CEO Richard Plepler. Photo: AP
The Reporter said evidence of the materials arrived via an email with nine file attachments with “such labels as ‘Confidential’ and ‘Script GOT7’,” the Game of Thrones episode due to air on August 14. It is unclear whether the publicly accessible URL has been sent to other media sites or been posted online, the Reporter added. A non-exhaustive search of some social media sites including Reddit and Twitter showed that if the latest documents are out, they have not spread very far across the most public-facing parts of the web yet.
The hackers claim to have 1.5 terabytes of data and had previously released the personal details of one HBO executive (it’s unclear if it is the same executive) as well as screenshots of the network’s internal administrative system.
The leak of the contents of one executive’s emails does not necessarily indicate the hackers have compromised HBO’s entire email network, something the network denies — and since the hackers are demanding an undisclosed amount of money, they could be bluffing. The August 7 episode of Game of Thrones leaked last week before its air date, though some sources said the release of the episode was not linked to the hackers.
The Reporter wrote the documents included a video letter addressed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, who was not the executive whose emails were leaked.
“We successfully breached into your huge network,” the video said. “… HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with but we succeeded (it took about 6 months).”
“HBO believed that further leaks might emerge from this cyber incident when we confirmed it last week,” the network wrote in a statement to Variety. “As we said, the forensic review is ongoing. While it has been reported that a number of emails have been made public, the review to date has not given us a reason to believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised.”