Love HBO? ‘Game of Thones?’ obsessivore times ten? Absolutely can’t wait to find out what happens next with Arya and the crew in the next episode?
Well, here’s some disheartening news for fans of the popular television network: HBO has had their servers hacked. It’s been making a big splash because of the volume of information involved, which comes out to about 1.5 terabytes of data (that’s a lot of data, or about 2,000 CD roms or 750 hours of video).
Now, things have gotten even crazier. A hacker, who goes by the title “Mr.Smith” posted a new group of stolen HBO files online, and stated that HBO would have to pay a steep ransom of several million dollars to avoid these kind of leaks in the future.
According to USA Today, “a video letter” from the hackers has been directed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler. In the video, ‘Mr. Smith’ said that HBO must pay “our 6 month salary in bitcoin,” which the hacker or hackers implied is at least $6 million.
As The Hollywood Reporter shares, the hackers didn’t have the easiest time accomplishing the feat. The Hacker video letter revealed, “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).” Clearly, getting to the bottom of all those Game of Thrones spoilers was no stroll through the park.
Esquire UK also dropped news of the actual ransom note’s contents: “Our demand is clear and Non-Negotiable: We want XXXX dollars to stop leaking your Data. HBO spends 12 million for Market Research and 5 million for GOT7 advertisements. So consider us another budget for your advertisements!” HBO ended the note “to be continued” and stated that HBO had three days to meet their demands.
The HBO co-chairwoman Amy Pascal had some of her leaked emails included in the hacked data, which included off-color jokes about President Barack Obama. She resigned from her job following the hack.
What else was hiding in those 1.5 terabytes? Apparently, it contained scripts from five Game of Thrones episodes, emails from HBO executives and internal documents. The hackers claim they have lots more, like information that could damage HBO and episodes of shows and movies that haven’t been released yet.
In another drop of classified info the hackers got their hands on, the perpetrators released personal phone numbers and email addresses of Game of Thrones actors. We’re guessing now is probably not a good time to shoot Emilia Clarke an email and ask what happens next.
