HBO's Security Breach Leads to 4 Arrests in India - The UpStream

HBO's Security Breach Leads to 4 Arrests in India

posted Saturday Aug 19, 2017 by Scott Ertz

HBO's Security Breach Leads to 4 Arrests in India

It would appear that HBO's security procedures need to be reassessed. In the past few weeks, several different incidents have ended with unaired episodes of HBO shows being leaked to the public ahead of their official release. A group of hackers recently demanded money from the network to prevent the release of data that had been stolen from their servers, including scripts for Game of Thrones episodes, emails from executives and more.

If that was the only data, HBO would likely have ignored the threats. However, more damaging data was included in that stolen - cast lists for Game of Thrones, which included names, addresses and phone numbers. That kind of information is what will cause HBO to respond to future demands. If additional cast lists are included in the over 1TB of data stolen in this breach.

Unfortunately for HBO, this isn't the only issue they are dealing with. In India, employees of an HBO partner released a full episode of Game of Thrones before its airing in the country. The partner is responsible for streaming the content after its initial airing, but the employees took the data and made it public unofficially. Unlike the direct hackers, these employees were dealt with almost immediately. In fact, all 4 people involved were arrested in India. Though arrests were made, investigations are ongoing into how and why this incident happened.

In addition to Game of Thrones, new episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose series reboot won't officially happen until October, have also leaked online. This is a huge problem for the network, and one that absolutely needs to be solved. The value of the company and the brand are dependent upon getting their data policies under control, retaining episodes from partners until completely necessary, and respond to any future breaches with swift action.

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