DMCA takedown notice says hackers stole “thousands” of internal HBO documents

The hack of HBO isn’t limited to a handful of Game of Thrones episodes; a DMCA takedown notice issued on behalf of the company says hackers stole “thousands of Home Box Office (HBO) internal company documents.” And, as the notice indicates, the data is already in the wild.

Variety first noticed the notice., which was filed by IP Echelon, a company that performs such duties for a number of media companies. Hundreds of gigabytes of “copyrighted items including documents, images, videos and sound” were being served from a site that has since been taken down. It originally prominently advertised “HBO HACKED” as well as the twin taglines “Winter in [sic] coming” and “HBO is falling.”

Links to several unreleased shows were provided, including Game of Thrones with its scripts, as you have probably heard, but also some not due to air for months: episodes 1 and 2 of the Bill Hader vehicle Barry, for instance.

An HBO executive’s email and phone number were provided as well; I’ve contacted them but can’t say I expect to hear back. If my email was put up like that I’d be screening my inbox with a vengeance.

More company documents, reportedly internal emails and the like, appear to have been linked in files labelled “HBO is falling” parts 1 through 3. Variety reported that personal information of some people was being published online, as well as images of internal tools. The hackers claimed to have nabbed some 1.5 terabytes of data in total.

What news lurks in the leaked files? It’s a difficult task to find out responsibly and ethically, but we’re going to try. We’ve also reached out to the FBI for more information.

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