When reports of the attack first surfaced, much of the chatter focused on the release of a “Games of Thrones” script, which was said to have been leaked by the hacker, "little.finger66." But the popular show wasn’t the only victim.
According to Tatiana Siegel, a senior writer at The Hollywood Reporter, the incident was much more sophisticated than first thought. The hacker found "multiple points of entry" into the company’s data. He also didn’t leave a ransom note.
Considering the seriousness of the attack, the FBI and Mandiant, the same security company that helped in the Sony attack, have jumped on the case.
"The entire Library of Congress is estimated to contain 10 terabytes of print content," Ajay Arora, CEO of security firm Vera, told THR. "As such, it’s hard to believe the video and/or audio are not part of what was stolen."
"It will be interesting — and terrifying to HBO and their parent, Time Warner— to see what comes out," Arora added.
While their intentions are still unclear, the hackers have since leaked the personal information of a senior HBO executive along with data on dozens of online accounts, including paid newspaper subscriptions, online banking and personal health services, Variety reported.
Though there is little detail on what else might have been nabbed, many are wondering whether the Westeros-loving hacker got ahold of similar emails and financial data that led to the ouster of Sony’s Amy Pascal. Only time will tell.
"Data protection is a top priority at HBO, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the data we hold," the premium cable service announced during its Monday acknowledgement of the hack.
HBO has since submitted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice to have Google take down any links, videos, images and sounds for leaked files.
Earlier this year, hackers also managed to leak episodes of Netflix’s original series "Orange Is The New Black."
