GoT S7 Hack Timeline: 7 Times That Game Of Thrones Got Leaked

[bsaambl]

“Spoilers Morghulis!”

As a GoT fan, you must be wheezing from saying this over and over again by now.

With only two days to the Season Finale of Game Of Thrones 7, hackers have LEAKED THE FINAL SCENES OF THE SEASON somewhere in the Darkweb! Makes you want to scream out in high Valyrian, right?

Game of Thrones Season 7 and its sad saga of leaks did make it quite a challenge for the law abiding fans to not opt for the pirated versions floating all over their social feeds.

Here’s a quick glance at GoT S7’s leaks, just for you.

1 August: Hackers Attack HBO Servers, Steal Data

And when we say ‘data’, we mean 1.5 TB of it! Of-course the immediate worry was if their flagship show, Game Of Thrones (which was just down two episodes of the season, then) could be hit.

A Reuters report said that the hackers had already up-linked the "script or treatment" for the then “next week's episode of Game of Thrones”.

4 August: GoT s7e4 is Leaked Online In Low-Res

This one was particularly embarrassing for India. Turned out that the episode was compromised two days before its official airing, thanks to HBO’s Indian distributor, Star India. (Remember Hotstar is the only way to legally watch it here?)

A probe was launched with Star India’s request, and later four people were arrested. You’d be amazed to know what motivated them to commit the crime. It was love, apparently.

Inspired by GoT, much?

7 August: GoT s7e5 Script Leaked

A group of hackers calling themselves Mr Smith posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online, and demanded a multi-million dollar ransom in BitCoins from the network. The files were quite aptly watermarked as ‘H.B.O is falling’.

The video text was written in often flawed, but fluent English peppered with misspellings and pop-culture references.

16 August: HBO Nordic
‘Accidentally’ Airs GoT S7E6

A Reddit thread let the world know that HBO Nordic was airing the anticipatory episode 6 of the latest GoT season “by mistake for one hour.” In high resolution!

The thread also carried a screenshot of the screening. Of course fans live streamed the entire thing on various social networking platforms. And of course the video made its way to torrents and eventually to our device screens.

Admit it. Your fingers did hover over that ‘leak link’, when it exploded on the internet.

Fans all over the world wanted to know what HBO Spain team was smoking to have made such a blunder.

Or wait, was this HBO’s grand idea to fight back the hackers?

‘You can’t threaten us if we officially leak it ourselves.”

17 August: HBO’s Social Media Accounts get Hacked Into

By now fans were waiting more for the ‘leak of the week’ than the actual episode.

So the moment word floated that HBO accounts were hacked, fans scurried to see if any spoilers were posted or not. Alas. This time, the hackers were ‘ethical’ (wait, is that an oxymoron?).

The group called OurMine were merely pointing out how weak HBO’s cyber security was. (No kidding!)

18 August: Hackers Threaten To Leak The Finale

Well, so far these were empty threats. At least the episodes that were leaked was the network or its partner’s fault. Guess that motivated the hackers to ramp up their game and thus came their threat, in the form of a letter to Mashable, as is evident from their article.

So, this time, did they act on it?

Sadly, yes.

25 August: Hackers Spoil Season Finale

Fresh headlines suggest that the hackers, Mr Smith, have sold HBO’s stolen data to customers in the Darkweb. And wait for it... the illegally sold data also has the ending of this season!

“Game of throne is over. Wait for major waves!!! RIP HB-Old.”

- Mr Smith, the Hackers.
 

"Mashable has read the confidential summary but has chosen not to publish the explicit details," the report said.
Before you rush to obscure parts of the Internet to hunt for the spoiled GoT S7 climax, do consider how the makers of the show feel. After investing their precious time, energy, money and most of all, talent, someone just stole away their masterpiece.

The show makers probably want to ‘Dracarys’ away the hackers.

While we don’t know if our beloved characters survived the season, we clearly have a winner for this Game Of Leaks.