HBO has suffered yet another leak as the sixth episode of the hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones has leaked online before its premiere on Sunday.
“We have learned that the upcoming episode of Game of Thrones was accidentally posted for a brief time on the HBO Nordic and HBO España platforms,” an HBO spokesperson said. “The error appears to have originated with a third-party vendor and the episode was removed as soon as it was recognized. This is not connected to the recent cyber incident at HBO in the US.”
While it was only available for a brief amount of time before being pulled, the material soon spread to Reddit and YouTube. Those links were also removed, but the episode has also hit torrenting networks.
It’s the second episode of the latest season to have leaked before its premiere after a breach at Star India, the network showing Game of Thrones in that country. This week has seen four arrests in that case. “This is the first time in the history of Star India that an incident of this nature has occurred,” a company statement read earlier this week. “We are deeply grateful to the police for their swift and prompt action.”
The two incidents are separate from a larger hack that saw an anonymous source target the network, stealing 1.5 terabytes of data and leaking unaired episodes of Insecure, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ballers as well as company emails and Game of Thrones script summaries.
“We are not in communication with the hacker and we’re not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released,” HBO said in a statement. “It has been widely reported that there was a cyber incident at HBO. The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That’s a game we’re not going to participate in.”
The various leaks have had no effect on ratings, however. Game of Thrones continues to reach new highs: Sunday’s episode scored 10.72 million viewers, up from the previous episode’s high of 10.2 million.
- This article was amended on 16 August 2017. An earlier version said that the seventh episode had been leaked. This has been corrected to say the sixth episode.
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