With the latest season of Game of Thrones winding down, the Mr. Smith hacking group that reportedly stole over 1.5TB of data from the premium network at the end of July are back with another major leak just days before the finale. Mashable on Friday received a data dump from the hackers containing “confidential plot summaries and outlines” that purportedly sum up the end of season 7.
“We know exactly what HBO and shoemakers around are doing now,” the hacking group told Mashable in an email. “Unlike HBO, we never getting surprised. Pattern analysis of HBO’s silly hidden acts are as we expected. We eagerly waiting for Fireye’s report … tell them to hurry up.”
The group demanded $6.5 million in Bitcoin a few weeks ago, but it appears that HBO was unwilling to cooperate. As a result, Mr. Smith appears to have moved on to a backup plan: selling the data on the dark web. Not only that — the group claims that it has far more data than originally reported.
“By the way, we officially inform you and other hundred of reporters whom emailing us that we sold ‘HBO IS FALLING’s entire collection (5 TB!!!) to 3 customer in deep web and we earned half of requested ransom,” said the group. “We put a condition for our respected customers and they approved. We will leak many many waves of HBO’s internal stuff to punish them for playing us and set an example of greedy corporation.”
Mashable reached out to HBO for a response to the new dump, but the network referred the publication to a previous statement: “The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That’s a game we’re not going to participate in.”
