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HBO Downplays Threat From Hack

Aug 2, 2017  •  Post A Comment

After acknowledging this week that “proprietary information” had been stolen in a cyberattack, HBO is now suggesting that the breach may not have been as bad as feared.

The AP reports that in an email today to HBO employees, CEO Richard Plepler wrote that “we do not believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised.”

A review of the hack is ongoing, and Plepler noted that the company is hiring an outside firm to assist employees with monitoring of their financial accounts.

As we reported previously, it appears that episodes of some HBO series including “Ballers” were leaked online as a result of the hack, along with script material for “Game of Thrones.” Other series episodes that appear to have been leaked include “Insecure,” “Room 104” and “Barry,” which was not due to appear on the network until 2018.

Meanwhile, Variety was reporting that the hack may have been worse than first thought. “A security company hired by HBO to scrub search results for the hacked files from search engines has told Google that the hackers stole ‘thousands of Home Box Office (HBO) internal company documents,'” Variety reported today.

Variety adds: “The hackers appear to have also leaked personal information of a senior HBO executive. That information, published online in a text document, contains access information to dozens of online accounts, including paid newspaper subscriptions, online banking, and personal health services. At least one of these accounts may also have given the hackers access to the executive’s work email.”

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