General/Press

Hacker to Be Charged for HBO Server Attack and Attempted Extortion

Posted on by David Rosenblatt

Littlefinger2

They say all publicity is good publicity, but I’m pretty sure this mantra quickly dissipates once you’re sitting on the other side of a jail cell. Such might soon be the fate for the alleged thief who hacked the HBO database and leaked data on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Variety reports that Behzad Mesri, an Iranian citizen will be charged by federal authorities for breaking into HBO computers and stealing data. During the airing of season 7 in summer 2017, we talked about this quite a bit here, and here, and even here! But the adrenaline rush a hacker must get by stealing the content of the world’s most popular television show surely isn’t worth the price paid at the other end of it…

“In July, HBO confirmed that its computer systems had been breached, resulting in what it said was “the compromise of proprietary information.” The hacker, who called himself “Mr. Smith” in some communiques, reportedly made off with a trove of 1.5 terabytes of data and demanded millions in ransom payments from HBO in Bitcoin.”

Looks like ‘Mr. Smith’ has finally met his match – just how devastating the consequences will be is something we’ll soon find out, as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York has scheduled an upcoming press conference to detail the charges. But Game of Thrones wasn’t the only HBO program safe from the hacker who fashions himself a Brad Pitt wannabe. They also released:

“…episodes of HBO shows including “Ballers” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” HBO offered a $250,000 payoff to the hacker as a so-called “bug bounty,” but that move was in fact was a stall tactic by HBO as it assessed the situation.

Listen, Game of Thrones is one thing, but when you mess with Dwayne Johnson and Larry David, there will be hell to pay!!! We’ll see what happens after details emerge from the press conference…
7x07 Littlefinger Death

 

 

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David Rosenblatt

21 Comments

  6. Waiting for the U.S. Attorney’s press conference, hopefully followed by a perp walk for the jackass.

    If there were real justice, that crook would be doing a Walk of Shame down Fifth Avenue, trailed by Hannah Waddingham in costume as Septa Unella.

    Shame! 🔔 Shame! 🔔 Shame! 🔔

  9. Mr Derp:
    I wanna see the bad man fly through the Moon door

    Yep, that would be poetic justice or to make him do the ‘Walk of Atonement’ –
    Shame – shame – shame LOL 😀

    Good to know that HBO never paid $250K to the hacker and that was just a stall tactic for the authorities to nail the geezer!

  10. Not too bright for a hacker, seeing as there was no new information anyway that hadn’t already been leaked for GoT (can’t say I give a rat’s ass about the other 2 shows, so I don’t know about them.)

    People has the dumb.

  11. Its seems good that he got captured and will be denied for this..but how they can be sure that there wont be other more jackass smarter hackers than this one ..who can still their job using more effective ways to be into HBOs programs next time?

  14. singedbylife,

    I don’t know the logistics and legalities of it all, but I read something similar. Apparently, the hacker can only be arrested if he leaves the country or something like that. Though, I seem to recall a hacker being arrested in India for something similar, so I really don’t know what, if anything, will happen.

  16. singedbylife:
    The man is located in Iran. There won’t be any actual consequences for him at all.

    Ah, for some obscure reason I thought this guy was an Iranian immigrate and living in the US. Unless the CIA send in the heavy brigade and kidnap him out of Iran, I can’t see there’s much that can be done 😉

  19. Computer security. It’s time HBO – and others – learned what it is, and start taking it seriously. With all the tens of millions HBO spends PER EPISODE for their premiere series, they couldn’t afford $100k PER YEAR for some security professionals?

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