Home Box Office, well known as HBO to television audiences across the world is said to have become a victim of a massive cyber attack on Saturday last week. And as per the sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders, hackers allegedly obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company which includes upcoming episodes of Ballers and Room 104 as well as a script from one of the upcoming episodes of “Game of Thrones”.
Early today, HBO Chairman and CEO Richard Plepler confirmed this news to the media after sending an email to HBO employees alerting them of the breach. The email confirmed the attack and added that law enforcement in coordination with some cyber security agencies is currently looking into the issue.
HBO has assured to the world that its IT team will from now on take all necessary steps to protect the company’s digital assets from all kinds of future cyber attacks.
In 2015, HBO was first to cyber attacked by some hackers from Europe who leaked some episodes from the 5th season of “Game of Thornes” just after the premiere.
Netflix and ABC were also attacked in a similar way last year where some episodes from series such as Orange is the New Black( Netflix) were held as a hostage for ransom by hackers.
ABC’s unscripted Steve Harvey’s Game show titled “Funderdome” were also released online when the show’s producer refused to oblige the demands of the hackers.
Even ABC’s parent company Disney was targeted by cyber crooks early this year. It is said that hackers first stole a digital copy of Pirates of Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and threatened to release bits of it online if the makers failed to pay them a ransom in bitcoins crypto currency.
Initially, FBI declared this cyber incident as a hoax. But later it gathered evidence that the attack was carried out by same criminals who were behind the Sony hack of 2014.
