HBO has been hit with a cyber attack that may have compromised up to 1.5 terabytes of the company's data—including episodes of some of the network's most popular shows, Entertainment Weekly reports.
Forthcoming episodes of Ballers and Room 104 are already online, along with what the hackers claim is a script from next week's episode of Game of Thrones. HBO confirmed the attack, and announced that it's working with law enforcement and private cybersecurity companies to prevent the world from binge-watching the entirety of winter on Westeros or whatever.
"There has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming," HBO's chairman and CEO Richard Plepler wrote in an email to employees. "Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us."
The hacker (or hackers) behind the attack seem to have been particularly focused on getting their hands on Game of Thrones, HBO's biggest hit series. There's a massive market for free, illegal episodes: Last week's season 7 premiere was pirated a colossal 90 million times, Business Insider reports.
"The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening," an anonymous email sent to EW on Sunday claimed, apparently regarding the hack. "Its [sic] HBO and Game of Thrones... HBO is falling."
Additionally, the network has faced criticism in recent weeks after announcing that GoT's creators—David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—will be developing a new show called Confederate about legal slavery in an alternate reality where the South won the Civil War. During Sunday night's episode, the creator of #OscarsSoWhite, April Reign, launched a new Twitter campaign aimed at HBO, asking users to tweet using #NoConfederate, CNN reports.
HBO is just the latest entertainment company to fall victim to a cyber attack. In April, hackers leaked several full episodes of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black, and another anonymous cyber-warrior threatened to drop Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in May, though the reveal never materialized.
The worst attack—that is, until now—hit Sony in 2014, a 26-gigabyte dump that exposed sensitive personal information, internal communications, and dirt on high-profile celebrities, along with a ton of coveted content. The fact that the HBO hack could reveal up to 1,474 more gigs of sensitive data than were exposed at Sony is sure to be stoking some serious fears for HBO. Although the network won't confirm what has or has not been taken, Plepler seems to believe the media giant has things under control.
"The problem before us is unfortunately all too familiar in the world we now find ourselves a part of," he wrote in a company-wide email. "As has been the case with any challenge we have ever faced, I have absolutely no doubt that we will navigate our way through this successfully."
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