The nightmare for Home Box Office (HBO) is not over yet as Mr.Smith, the hacker or group of hackers who breached and stole a trove of data from Network is back and threatening to leak Episode 7 from Season 7 of Game of Thrones, which is its finale.
Hackers revealed this in a conversation with Mashable in which the group also shared login credentials for the social media accounts of HBO, @GameOfThrones, and @WestworldHBO. The hackers also defaced the official Giphy account of Westworld, HBO’s science-fiction western thriller television series.
“Be ready for GOT S& E6 &E7 as soon as possible, hackers told Mashable.
Giphy is an online database and search engine that allows users to search for and share animated GIF files. The site is widely used by ordinary users as well as media and tech giants to generate GIF files for their websites and social media platforms.
In a screenshot shared by hackers, it can be seen that the hackers defaced the account with messages of their own for instance “HB-Old is Dying” and “HBO is falling. Here is a full preview of the deface page:
At the time of publishing this article, the Giphy account for WestworldHBO was deleted. However, it should not come as a surprise since in their initial data dump the hackers not only leaked scripts for several HBO TV series but also leaked the sensitive details belonging to the Network’s Executive Vice President of Legal Affairs Viviane Eisenberg.
The details included credit card numbers, other banking details, emails and passwords for her social media and email accounts, education-related login credentials and other sensitive data. This shows the group is serious about giving a hard time to the HBO network.
Previously, the group demanded a multimillion dollar ransom from HBO threatening to leak more data if their demands were not met. However, now, the Network has decided not to respond to the hackers. In a media statement, a company’s spokesperson said that:
“We are not in communication with the hacker, and we’re not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released,” the statement said. “It has been widely reported that there was a cyber incident at HBO. The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That’s a game we’re not going to participate in.”
Remember, last week HBO Spain accidentally aired unreleased episode 6 from Season 7 of Game of Thrones. The episode remained on air for an hour before officially being taken down which was too late since a number of users ripped and shared the episode on several torrenting sites.
Also, Indian police arrested four people for uploading GOT’s episode 4 of season 7. The episode was unreleased at that time.
At the moment, it is unclear if the hackers have access to the season finale or not. But in case they do, and they are willing to leak in online; that would be a disaster for the network.
