Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) said “current and former employees,” not hackers, were responsible for the online appearance of an episode of Game of Thrones days before the show’s HBO premiere this month.
Episode 4 of season 7 of Game of Thrones was posted online with the watermark of Mumbai media company Star India on August 4, three days before its scheduled air date, PFT said. The company said it provided information to Mumbai police, who made four arrests on August 14.
“This was not a system hack,” PFT said in a statement, noting that the leak was unrelated to a hack of HBO that was widely reported at around the same time. “It was an illegal breach of obligations by the concerned persons despite PFT’s continual internal emphasis on protocols of content security and ethical practices.”
Also today, HBO took responsibility for an early leak of next Sunday’s scheduled episode, telling reporters that a vendor accidentally posted it to the HBO Nordic and HBO España platforms. And earlier this month, Europe’s Sky Deutschland accidentally screened the most recent episode of Showtime’s Twin Peaks one week early.
