Hackers Steal Game of Thrones Scripts- Want $6M, HBO Offers $250K

G

groveChuck

U-matic Member
Details of a data breach at HBO came to light last week. Scripts from shows such as "Game of Thrones" were leaked online ahead of Sunday's episode.

A hacker or group called "Mr. Smith" claimed responsibility and said they had around 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO.

The hackers demanded money worth six months of their salary, claiming they make $12 million to $15 million from stealing intellectual property and blackmailing companies. Those hackers appear to have been engaged in email correspondence with HBO.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/11/hbo-hack-game-of-thrones-ransom.html
 
Hopefully, the world has the ethics and fortitude not to slow down on the freeway to look at the bodies strewn on the other side from a car wreck; not to look at the published pictures of Princess Diana dying in the backseat of her car and not to read the scripts or watch the material acquired from stolen intellectual properties.
 
For $250K, I'll write a GoT script within a week. And I don't even watch the show.
 
I think the hackers are being foolish. The general viewing public isn't going to care enough to read a script, and a lot of loyal GOT viewers go out of their way to avoid spoilers. And none of it will matter once the show airs. If this was a movie going out to theatres, I could see a studio fearing it would impact ticket sales. But HBO is subscription based and I don't think they'll lose subscribers because an episode script is leaked. Plus, these episodes are torrented all over the web after they air anyway so fearing piracy isn't an issue for HBO, since it will be pirated anyway.
 
I still can't believe that after some of the high-profile hacks(read:THEFTS) that these companies still keep or allow this type of stuff on computers that are tied to the internet.

And if I'm a fan of the show(which I am) why in the hell would I want to read the script? I want to watch the episode. I purposefully stay behind so I can mini-binge and watch a few episodes at a time, so I even avoid articles that talk about shows I'm watching so they don't get spoiled.
 
Didn't this happen to Netflix? And wasn't their response as simple as making the content available ahead of schedule? Open the season on Go and move on, if most people can watch it, the hackors lose their leverage.

And then sever the connection between post production and internet. Rent dedicated fiber for connections between facilities. Put up special terminals where people can check their email.

And all that said, I'm betting it was an inside job. Tough to protect against employees that feel slighted, or ones making dirt for pay that can be bribed.
 
Run&Gun said:
I still can't believe that after some of the high-profile hacks(read:THEFTS) that these companies still keep or allow this type of stuff on computers that are tied to the internet....
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There are way to hack into systems that are not connected to the internet, via the removable media. Which is off-the-shelf. And this presumes this wasn't an inside job.

Batutta said:
... Plus, these episodes are torrented all over the web after they air anyway so fearing piracy isn't an issue for HBO, since it will be pirated anyway...
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The only reasonable solution is the Netflix type binge releases where everything is available at once. Otherwise, everything is available online ... especially if you understand Chinese or Russian.
 
DLD said:
There are way to hack into systems that are not connected to the internet, via the removable media. Which is off-the-shelf. And this presumes this wasn't an inside job.
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One would presume that it would have to be an inside job, then, because someone has to have physical access. But how many of these "hacks" have happened that didn't involve internet/outside/non-physical access?

Wasn't there a hack involving a small vendor back around Christmas '16(revealed a few months later) that was just a comedy of security protocol errors? They had an old Windows machine with un-patched/un-updated OS for some piece of software and it was left attached to their system/network and internet and the hackers basically stumbled across it and gained access through the old windows machine? They tried to keep it hidden from the studio and then went against the FBI's advise and paid the hackers and the hackers still released the material. I believe the hackers also deleted(or locked) the material on the vendors end, so the material was essentially gone.

*Found the article. It was involving Netflix/Orange is the New Black.

https://variety.com/2017/digital/features/netflix-orange-is-the-new-black-leak-dark-overlord-larson-studios-1202471400/
 
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Run&Gun said:
One would presume that it would have to be an inside job, then, because someone has to have physical access. But how many of these "hacks" have happened that didn't involve internet/outside/non-physical access ...
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I am sure there's a lot of "oops, I did it again" type of fishing and spoofing attacks. The removable media involves giving someone an infected flash drive.

Here's an interesting thing - let's presume these are foreign (non-US) based hackers. They seem to be a lot more successful than the "official" Russian hackers* that came up snake eyes.

*Vlad was giving an interview to Megyn Kelly, who asked if the Kremlin controlled group was behind the DNC/RNC/CNN attacks. Putin replied, "No but it's conceivable that a Russian patriot group outside of the Kremlin did it". That made me chuckle. Putin controls everything inside Russia and is a big fan of these covert actions (during his youth, spy thrillers where a Russian agent got the goods or, in turn, a foreign agent was caught and recruited to work against his former masters were hugely popular in the USSR). In any case, the combined efforts of the GRU (military intelligence) and FSB/KGB achieved nothing and its instigators got caught red handed in the process. Whoever these guys are, they're far more efficient. If they're in Russia, they are likely giving kickbacks to the FSB but they could also be based in the former USSR states and are on the FSB payroll and/or protection. Otherwise, they're open to extradition, even when only traveling,

http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2017/jul/30/u-s-going-after-russian-hackers-2017073/?news
 
So, a well known progressive magazine claims that, according to its IT experts, the DNC email hacks were an inside job because the files were too large to be transferred to Russia/Romania via only an internet connection. Now, if the DNC email files were "too large", how big were the GoT episode files? And, if so, one could probably throttle the Internet speeds (especially if they had 24/7 security) to thwart the 1080p uploads. And, one'd think that, after the old Sony hacks that cost Amy Pascal her job and the (alleged) Russian hacks, the HBO internet security procedures would be at the highest level.
 
No episodes released- holding out for a big payout, or maybe it turns out they're just reeeeally big fans of the show...

NEW YORK (AP) — Hackers continue to pester HBO, but didn't release any material related to the network's hit show "Game of Thrones" in their latest leak.

The hackers, who broke into HBO's computer network and have been doling out stolen information for the past several weeks, released more unaired episodes, including several of the highly anticipated return of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which debuts in October.

The latest dump includes Sunday night's episode of "Insecure," another popular show, and what appear to be episodes of other lower-profile shows, including "Ballers," the unaired shows "Barry" and "The Deuce," a comedy special and other programming.

The network acknowledged the hack in late July, and the thieves have been dribbling out stolen video and documents since then while demanding a multimillion-dollar ransom .

They have leaked "Game of Thrones" scripts, sensitive internal documents like job offer letters and a month's worth of emails from a programming executive. But the intrusion has so far fallen well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony when the studio was hacked in 2014.

Still, the criminals may be holding on to more damaging data — both intellectual property, like unaired programming, and sensitive personal information of HBO employees — that they can use as leverage to try to get money from HBO, said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

"It's kind of like kidnap and ransom and torture," she said. "Eventually HBO may have to give in."

In an emailed statement Sunday, HBO said it's "not going to participate" in what it described as attempts to generate attention by dropping "bits and pieces of stolen information." The company added that it was not in communication with the hackers. It has said previously that it doesn't believe its email system as a whole was breached.
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https://www.marketbeat.com/articles...odes-from-upcoming-season-of-curb-2017-08-13/
 
So terabytes of data went flying away over the internet which must have peaked their upload for a good long time, and no one noticed?
 
With cloud computing, servers are no longer local and so there is no local spigot that if heavily used, would be noticed. If a company is using a service such as Amazon or Google's cloud computing services, a transfer of data such as this is a tiny burp.

All it takes is one slip by an employee to click on the wrong thing in an email or download the wrong app and they are in. I was hit with ransomware (not paid because I had good offline backups) on a computer that was not used for email. I downloaded a video format converter. When I turned on the computer the next day, all files were locked up.
 
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And now they stole "Curb your Enthusiasm" too (the yet to be aired episodes).

And the question then becomes of what HBO does or doesn't do - and what it might have done and should be doing - to prevent these break-ins. Or whether the "hacks' are used as a coverup for the inside leaks. To me, using cloud servers with the finished material prior to the air date is far too risky.

As a side note, I recall the 11" laser discs that were all the rage in the late 1980's/early 1990's for the videophiles with deep pockets. Studios with so much at stake need some sort of a proprietary codec and/or proprietary medium. New tier of tape not connected to a server might be such a tool.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibms-w...mpressed-data-on-a-palm-sized-tape-cartridge/
 
Opps, too late: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/amazon-macie-helps-businesses-protect-102324122.html

Amazon Macie helps businesses protect their sensitive data in the cloud

"The company says that the fully managed service uses machine learning to monitor how data is accessed and to look for any anomalies. The service then alerts users of any activity that looks suspicious so that they can find the root cause of any data leaks (whether those are malicious or not)."
 
I still find it hard to believe that terabytes of source material would be edited from the cloud and therefore exposed to this risk. Leasing that size of connection would cost far more than shipping LTO tapes around.

But the casual way that screeners have always but thrown around is certainly a possibility, could they have unfinished screeners and finished screeners of each stolen item which would probably be in a smaller h.264 codec?

Protecting screeners would be far more simple, encrypt with something like PGP. Encrypting source material would be more difficult due to the size of the data (but not impossible), it would likely require decrypting things once on the local storage system for edit.

And of course, we are also assuming that all of this was actually on HBO owned properties, could it have been stolen from a post house that maybe doesn't have HBO's financial resources to protect their infrastructure? And even then I bet there is some amount of inside work on letting this stuff out.
 
At least in that specific case, but I'm still guessing that there was an inside person in the greater case of all episodes and shows not even scheduled for air. It would be mighty easy to bribe someone in a country where a single $1 gets you a lot. Which also happens to be where the cheapest place to store stuff and process stuff happens to be.
 
In which case, this becomes a matter of general, rather than cyber, security.

But, in terms of hacking servers and so on, this just came across the wires.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40454695/hacker-behind-malware-russia-fancy-bear-fbi

I am not linking to the quoted NYT article because the NYT allows only a limited number of pages to be accessed free of charge and not everyone without a subscription might want to spend their free-be on this. The link is within the Fast Company piece regardless.
 
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