Hacker Who Leaked HotD Finale Really Pissed Off HBO, Was Arrested Recently
Do you remember when the last episode of S1 got leaked two days before the premiere?
Well, justice was served, and there's a mind-blowing story behind it.You won't find a single director, showrunner, or movie director who would enjoy having their work ruined for them and their fans.
The people from the movie and TV series industry hate scoopers, but they hate leakers even more — and there's a good reason for it… But admittedly, no one hates them quite like HBO.
HBO's been a target for leakers for many years now.
Its most famous absolute world phenomenon show, Game of Thrones, has maintained the title of the most pirated series on the planet for the entire duration of its production. Now, the GoT prequel, House of the Dragon, became the new big target, apparently.
But the channel's executives are quite obviously totally done with tolerating this nonsense.
After the finale of HotD season 1 got leaked two days prior to its official premiere, HBO started its own little investigation and discovered traces of a hacker who stole the episode by tuning into a satellite TV company's servers.
With this information, the channel's representatives contacted the Cyber Unit of the Central District of Israel Police as they had reasons to believe that the suspect was Israeli.
The Cyber Unit then started an undercover investigation trying to narrow down the search for the person behind breaking the cyber law.
You wouldn't believe what gave the hacker away even if we tell you!
Upon analyzing the pirated file and the profile of the anonymous user who uploaded it, the Cyber Unit used so-called "advanced technological measures" to track down the criminal by pulling the tiniest threads and seeing where they lead.
The gag of this investigation is that the detectives found the hacker because of… His love for his cat.
The user who uploaded the video had the word "bird" in his nickname, and it turned out that the hacker's cat was called Bird.
He just wanted to pay something of a tribute to his beloved cat and this ended up being his downfall.
The suspect was arrested this Monday, and upon confiscating all electronic devices from him, the detectives released him under restrictive conditions while the Cyber Unit continues its investigation.
We guess the key takeaways from this story are to not pirate in Israel, to avoid pissing off HBO, and not to use your pet's name as an alias if attempting to break the law.
Alternatively, you could also just wait until the official release and watch your favorite show in 4K instead of spending some quality time in your local prison.
Source: The Jerusalem Post