The summer of 2017 certainly was a rollercoaster for HBO: while they were enjoying positive feedback about the astonishingly-popular Game of Thrones, they had to worry about episodes leaking before their official release date. As you might recall, unidentified attacker managed to gain access to HBO’s servers and obtain scripts and entire episodes of multiple HBO TV shows. Of course, this stolen data was attempted to be used as a leverage. Therefore, HBO quickly received ransom demands.
Now, FBI has announced to have figured out the culprit of hacks against HBO. An Iranian national named Behzad Mesri has been charged with this cyber crime against HBO. The hacker disguises his name with a surname ‘Skote Vahshat” and appears to be a member of Turk Black Hat Security hacking group. According to charges, Mesri is involved in many other hacking incidents as well.
Behzad Mesri clearly attempted to publicize his hack and even gave a very unique name for it: “HBO is Falling’. Crook contacted many media representatives and promoted his success in obtaining 1.5 TB of HBO’s data. He asked the company to pay $6 million ransom in exchange of keeping all of the stolen data from being published. However, HBO did not pay the ransom. Therefore, hacker released scripts of some of the unaired Game of Thrones episodes.
Since Game of Thrones series were the hottest summer phenomenon, other leaks of HBO’s shows appeared to have been overshadowed. Mesri did not focus mainly on GOT, and published unaired episodes of Felipe Esparza, Latino Shorts, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Insecure, The Deuce, Vice Principals, Ballers, Barry and Room 104. However, the media was eager to write catchy headlines with the “Game of Thrones hack”.
Currently, Behzad Mesri is still in Iran and has not been arrested. However, prosecutors are planning to charge him with a variety of crimes: from cyber attacks, hacks, wire fraud and identity thefts. With all of these crimes combined, Mesri is looking at more than 20 years of jail-time. Unfortunately, the hacker is still in Iran and US authorities are not going to be able to arrest him easily. As you might know, US and Iran does not have the best relationship. Therefore, it is doubtful that Iran would co-operate with FBI.
However, US prosecutors remain hopeful that justice will be served. Sooner or later, the hacker will receive punishments for his activity and malicious attempts. Mesri first learned the subtle art of hacking while working for the Iranian military. He was able to break into Israeli infrastructure and other military software systems. Briefly said, such a talented hacker should be behind bars.
Source: mashable.com.
