‘Game of Thrones’ Facebook, HBO Twitter Hacked
Several HBO social media accounts, including those for hit shows like Game of Thrones and Veep, were hacked Wednesday, Variety reports. A group called OurMine carried out the attack, posting a message on HBO‘s official Twitter scolding the network for its weak security.
The social media hack comes as HBO continues to deal with the fallout from a major cyber attack. In late July, a different hacker group obtained a trove of sensitive data from HBO and has since been leaking scripts and episodes of various shows.
However, OurMine’s goals were far less nefarious. After gaining access to HBO’s Twitter, the group wrote in a since-deleted tweet: “Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security, HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security.” Per screenshots, the group posted the same message on the Game of Thrones Facebook page, as well as the note, “let’s make #HBOHacked trending!”
Other HBO programs that saw their social media accounts usurped include Veep, Last Week Tonight, Silicon Valley and Ballers. HBO quickly deleted OurMine’s posts after they went up.
Per The Daily Beast, OurMine, a self-described “white hat” hacker group whose goals are to raise awareness about lax security, has carried out similar attacks on high profile websites and social media pages. The group has previously targeted sites like BuzzFeed, YouTube and Wikipedia, and the personal accounts of tech CEOs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
While HBO was able to quickly regain control of its social media pages, it remains at the whims of the other hackers, who claim they have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the network. Earlier this month, the hackers, who go by “Mr. Smith,” demanded HBO hand over about $6 million in bitcoin to stop the leaks. The group has already posted unreleased episodes and scripts for shows like Insecure, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ballers and Room 104, while on Wednesday – amidst the social media takeover – Mr. Smith leaked yet another episode of Game of Thrones.