04 August, 2017
On Monday, the hacking group - which calls itself "little.finger66" - released the alleged script for the "Game of Thrones" episode scheduled to air on August 6.
The hack of HBO was first revealed July 31 when hackers claimed to have stolen data from the company including upcoming episodes of television programs and a script for a future episode of the hit show "Game of Thrones". It has not been confirmed whether the links are real.
"At 1.5 terabytes, it could be a whole block of TV, or worse, it could be emails, financial documents, employee or customer information", says Erik Rasmussen, a former special agent with the Secret Service who now works at United States cybersecurity firm Kroll, told The Hollywood Reporter.
"Data protection is a top priority at HBO, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the data we hold", the premium cable service announced during its Monday acknowledgement of the hack.
HBO joins the ranks of Sony, which suffered a major hack in 2014 that compromised the personal information of tens of thousands of people.
Follow Leanna on Instagram and Twitter. "At this time, we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised, but the forensic review is ongoing".
"As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming", he wrote.
Excluding video and audio, the 1.5 terabytes stolen could encompass all of HBO's information, including every confidential email or spreadsheet ever saved. "Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us".
"I can assure you that our senior leadership and our extraordinary technology team, along with outside experts, are working round the clock to protect our collective interests".
The HBO hack may have been worse than the initial leaks of a few unaired TV show episodes suggested. For instance, when hackers accessed unreleased episodes of "Orange is the New Black", through a third-party production company, hackers claimed Netflix did not pay their ransom demand and they subsequently published the episodes online. The hack, which is believed to have involved a staggering 1.5 terabytes of data, seven times the size of the Sony hack, targeted specific content and data housed in different locations.
Game of Thrones is pirated extremely often anyways, but even more pirating will only hurt HBO.
