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

It’s too late to ‘Dracarys’ away the hackers.

“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 on 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 law-abiding fans not to opt for the pirated versions floating all over their social feeds. The temptation!

But 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 would be hit. Annnd of course it was.

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 four people were later arrested. You’d be amazed to know what motivated them to commit the crime – it was love.

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 error-ridden 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 viewers’ 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’s Spain team was smoking to have made such a blunder.

Or wait, was this HBO’s grand idea to pre-empt the hackers?

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

17 August: HBO’s Social Media Accounts the Next Casualty

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. Alas, this time, the hackers were ‘ethical’.

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 upto now was the network or its partners’ fault. Guess that motivated the hackers to up their game and thus came the threat, in the form of a letter to Mashable.

So, this time, did they act on it?

Sadly, yes.

25 August: Season Finale Ruined by Hackers!

Fresh headlines suggest that the hackers, Mr Smith, have sold the data they had stolen from HBO 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 the makers of the show. After investing their precious time, energy, money and most of all, talent, someone just stole away their masterpiece.

The show’s makers probably wish they could ‘Dracarys’ someone right now.

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