Prosecutors Charge Iranian National in HBO Hacking
November 21 2017 - 11:45AM
Dow Jones News
By Nicole Hong
Federal prosecutors unsealed charges against an Iranian national
Tuesday, accusing him of hacking into HBO's computer network,
stealing unreleased scripts of "Game of Thrones" and then
threatening to leak them publicly unless HBO paid a
multimillion-dollar ransom.
Behzad Mesri, who is at large and hasn't been arrested, was
charged by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office on seven counts,
including computer fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity
theft.
The government said Mr. Mesri is a computer hacker in Iran who
has worked on behalf of the Iranian military to target Israeli
infrastructure and nuclear software systems. He has allegedly
operated under an online hacker pseudonym of "Skote Vahshat."
A lawyer for Mr. Mesri couldn't immediately be identified.
Since at least May, Mr. Mesri began monitoring the online
activities of HBO employees, looking for vulnerabilities in the
company's network, according to prosecutors.
Over the next couple months, Mr. Mesri compromised user accounts
that belonged to HBO employees and used them repeatedly to gain
unauthorized access and steal proprietary information from the
company, the indictment said.
Mr. Mesri allegedly stole scripts and plot summaries for unaired
episodes of HBO's series "Game of Thrones," as well as video files
with unaired episodes of such shows as "Ballers" and "Curb Your
Enthusiasm."
He also stole financial documents, credentials for HBO's social
media accounts and the emails of at least one HBO employee, the
indictment said.
On July 23, an anonymous email was sent to HBO employees that
included the following message: "Hi to All losers! Yes it's true!
HBO is hacked!" The email allegedly provided evidence that the
hacker had successfully stolen proprietary data from HBO, a unit of
Time Warner Inc.
Another email later that day included a threat to publicly
release the stolen data, including unaired TV episodes and scripts,
unless HBO paid a ransom of approximately $5.5 million worth of
bitcoin. The email concluded with an image of the Night King, a
character from "Game of Thrones," and said: "Good luck to HBO."
In the coming days, emails from the anonymous hacker to HBO
personnel raised the ransom to approximately $6 million worth of
bitcoin, threatened to destroy data on HBO's servers and provided a
deadline of July 29 for HBO to begin making ransom payments if it
wanted to prevent the public disclosure of stolen data.
On July 30, Mr. Mesri began leaking some stolen materials over
the internet, prosecutors said. To promote the disclosures, Mr.
Mesri allegedly contacted members of the media and created a
Twitter account to announce the leaks.
A spokesman for HBO said the company has been "working with law
enforcement from the early stages of the cyber incident."
In recent years, hackers have increasingly used cyber extortion
-- or stealing corporate secrets and threatening to publicize them
if the victims don't pay a ransom -- as a way to make money, with
Hollywood studios as particularly attractive targets, experts
say.
Write to Nicole Hong at nicole.hong@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2017 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT)
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