Hackers take over official "Game of Thrones" twitter account.


HBO can’t catch a break from hackers who struck again this week. The Game of Thrones Twitter account was compromised by hacker gang “OurMine” who posted a warning message to the account’s 6 million followers. The message which has since been removed, read,
“Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security. HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security – ourmine .org -> Contact,”

[Image Source: Gizmodo]
The hack comes as the latest in a string of attacks on the channel. A hacker going by the name, Mr. Smith, has asked the company to pay them roughly 6 million dollars are else they will release terabytes worth of stolen data including full-length tv shows and private executive emails. The company responded with a widely reported offer of $250, 000 USD. Both full Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes have been leaked so far.  
OurMine refer to themselves as a ‘white hat’ group that work to alert companies and individuals to their security flaws, often in exchange for a work deal or bug bounty. The attack on the Game of Thrones twitter account must have sent HBO into a spin who are no doubt on full alert to security breaches. The tweet was deleted soon after posting. An HBO spokesperson has stated, they are “investigating’ the hack.  

Past OurMine victims

OurMine has a history of targeting high-profile Twitter accounts. Past victims have included Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, former Twitter boss Dick Costolo, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg, and actor Channing Tatum. They have also breached security on TechCrunch and Buzzfeed’s websites. 
Exactly how OurMine gained access to HBO’s Twitter account is unknown but it may have been helped by leaks from previous hackers. In July more than 1.5TB of data was released that may have held some clue to the accounts.
The hackers responsible for this massive attack hit again last week dropping more super sensitive information about popular shows Game of Thrones and Westworld. The leaked information included filming schedules and plot summaries. The fuel dump was accompanied by the message from the anonymous hacker, saying, “If history repeats itself HBO may never be the same again. Winter really is here.”

[Image Source: HBO]
HBO declined to comment on the fresh leaks. It is unknown if HBO is negotiating with Mr.Smith who previously demanded more than 6 million dollars to stop the hacking. HBO did offer $250,000 asking the hacker for cooperation. The hack has been comprehensive, not only full unreleased episodes released, but personal contact details of Game of Thrones staff have been made public alongside HBO executive emails.  
In a separate incident, HBO’s Nordic and Spanish sites inadvertently prematurely released the sixth episode of Game of Thrones season 7. HBO has blamed a third party vendor for this error.
Sources: Gizmodo, USAToday

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Experts call for international ban on autonomous weapons

Image
Over 100 roboticists and artificial intelligence experts have called for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems. Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System The call – made at the start of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2017) in Melbourne – has been endorsed in a letter signed by the founders of 116 robotics and AI companies who are concerned about their technologies being repurposed to into autonomous weapons . The letter, which includes Elon Musk founder of Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI as a signatory, states: “Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. “Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. “These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. “We do not have long to act. Once t...
Read more

The Future of Transportation at its Dawn

Image
  German automotive giant Continental is furthering its push into the future of transportation after it got its check book out to acquire  Quantum Inventions , a Singapore-based company that specializes in mobility data services. The deal was announced in June with little fanfare and it is officially undisclosed, but a source told TechCrunch that it is around the SG$40 million mark — that works out to around $29 million. That’s a pretty significant exit — both in name of acquirer and deal size — for Southeast Asia’s nascent yet promising tech ecosystem. You’d be hard pressed to call Quantum Inventions a startup, although it certainly operating in startup style. The company was founded in 2006, over ten years ago, and it has 120 staff across offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It is focused on ‘mobility solutions’ in the consumer, automotive and government/enterprise sectors. That’s a fairly broad term but...
Read more

Beyond Amazon and Alibaba: what’s next for e-commerce?

Image
How do you outsmart an 800 lb gorilla?  E-commerce retailers in the two biggest markets – China and the U.S. – grapple with this question every day. Many assume the e-commerce game is over given the immense success of Amazon and Alibaba (both have $400+B market caps).  Amazon has systematically commoditized product category after product category – books, houseware, electronics, clothing, grocery and more, while Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao platforms have captured market share and popular imagination with millions of SKUs, truly creating a global “everything store.” But declaring game-over in these markets is a mistake. A careful read of emerging trends reveals rich greenfield territory, where billion dollar start-ups can thrive by recognizing the opportunities of  global mass market  of millennials from day one. I’ve written more on millennial buying habits  here . Key to understanding these emerging trends is a redefinition of what we mea...
Read more