Hackers Leak Episodes Of 'Game Of Thrones' After Massive HBO Hack

The FBI Is Investigating The Hack, Which Is Seven Times Bigger Than The 2014 Sony HackOn Monday, Entertainment Weekly reported that HBO had been hacked by actors who claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company.

"HBO recently experienced a cyber incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information," the network confirmed in a statement. "We immediately began investigating the incident and are working with law enforcement and outside cybersecurity firms. Data protection is a top priority at HBO, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the data we hold."

[Entertainment Weekly]

At first, the hackers released unaired episodes of "Ballers" and "Room 104" along with written materials describing an unreleased "Game Of Thrones" episode. Today, they leaked even more unaired episodes of HBO shows, a sign of the enormous scope of the attack. Here's what we know.

The FBI Is Investigating The Hack

It's still not known what exactly the hackers got access to, but the size of the data breach suggests that they got plenty of video.

To put in context the 1.5 terabytes — or 1,500 gigabytes — claim, in the Sony case, about 200 gigabytes of data was released online, a damaging deluge that brought the studio to its knees and led to the ouster of then co-chair Amy Pascal. "A traditional business-grade DSL link would take about two weeks at full blast to exfiltrate that much data," says Farsight Security CEO Paul Vixie, noting that a finished Blu-ray is about 30 gigabytes. "If not for video and sound, a corporation the size of HBO might fit [entirely] in a terabyte, including all the email and spreadsheets ever written or stored."...
Sources say HBO is working with the FBI and cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which led the forensic investigation on the Sony hack (ironically, Mandiant also was targeted by hackers around the same time as the HBO breach).

[The Hollywood Reporter]

The Hackers Have Released Episodes Of Five HBO Shows, Including 'Game Of Thrones'

This morning, the hackers made the episodes available for anyone to download on a newly launched site called WinterLeak — which also has a section called 'Coming soon ...!"

The uploaded data includes unreleased episode 3 and 4 of popular TV series Games of Thrones Season 7 and its script, episode 1, 2 and 3 of Ballers's season 3, Episode 1 and 2 of upcoming comedy series Barry, unreleased Episode 2 and 3 of Room 104 TV series, episode 2 of Season 2 of TV series Insecure.

There are four other files in which three are labeled as HBO Is Falling – Part 01, HBO Is Falling – Part 02, Download HBO Is Falling Part 03, and Viviane Passwords.

[HackRead]

The hackers very clearly want attention for their misdeeds — on Saturday night, they sent an email to several reporters announcing "the greatest leak of cyber space era."

The hacker's e-mail read as follows:

"Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening. What’s its name? Oh I forget to tell. Its HBO and Game of Thrones……!!!!!! You are lucky to be the first pioneers to witness and download the leak. Enjoy it & spread the words. Whoever spreads well, we will have an interview with him. . . HBO is falling."

[Vanity Fair]

Watch as Patrick Stewart Recites a Poem with a Yorkshire Dialect

In a scene from TOWN with Nicholas Crane, Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek and X-men fame, gets nostalgic over his childhood and recites a poem in his native Yorkshire dialect. His mother and aunt would recite the poem around Christmas time every year which is probably why he still remembers it many years later. Stewart was born in Mirfield - a small town in West Yorkshire England.

Wildlife conservation on ice: frozen zoos to save animals

On the edge: Disease and habitat loss is decimating wild amphibian populations globally, with more than 200 species needing urgent intervention through captive breeding, says Dr. Simon Clulow. In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Department of Biological Sciences’ Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters. Clulow is keen to stress that this doesn’t mean getting rid of conventional zoos or captive breeding programs. “Captive breeding has had some wonderful successes, and there will always be a huge place for it,” he says. PhD student and lead author Lachlan Howell agrees. “It was captive breeding that brought the giant panda back f...

California’s surge of large wildfires: a multi-dimensional fire challenge

September 21, 2021 Accumulating fuels and rising populations are contributing to California’s large, destructive fires. Climate change has helped fuel California’s surge of unusually large and destructive fires by exacerbating heat waves and droughts , but climate is not the only factor contributing to the surge. More than a century of fire suppression has caused excessive amounts of dead trees, leaf litter, and dried brush to build up in forests. Meanwhile, California’s increasing population means that many more people now live and work in areas that are prone to fire. The consequences of all the fires are remarkable, even from space. The false-color image at the top of the page shows burn scars left by large fires that burned in recent years, including the two largest incidents on record in California: the August fire complex and the Dixie fire . The image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on September 21, 2021. ...

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