This is another huge blow to the popularity of HBO since they are blamed for having weak security measures earlier. This attack came after the recent popular attack on HBO from which the hacker group obtained sensitive data and episodes which they are leaking ever since. However, the intentions of OurMine are far less dangerous. After gaining the access to the Twitter account of HBO, they wrote a tweet saying “Hi, OurMine are here, we are just testing your security, HBO team please contact us to upgrade the security.” Per screenshots, the group posted the same message on the Game of Thrones Facebook page, as well as the note, “let’s make #HBOHacked trending!”. This tweet is later deleted by HBO. Other social media accounts of HBO that got hacked include Veep, Last Week Tonight, Silicon Valley and Ballers. HBO reacted quickly and managed to delete all the tweets from OurMine on these accounts. OurMine describes themselves as a group of “white hat” hackers who aim to raise the awareness about the lack of security by performing similar high profile attacks on tech giants like YouTube, Wikipedia, Buzzfeed and also on personal accounts of people with a high profile like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai. HBO managed to get hold of their twitter accounts pretty fast but they still are being threatened by the hackers who have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the network. Hope they consider this as a lesson and learn to take good security measures.
