A Netflix Security breach has occurred and some shows may have been leaked

The group of hackers that leaked the upcoming fifth season of “Orange Is the New Black” this weekend may have also secured access to some three dozen other shows and movies.

TheDarkOverlord, as the group calls itself, provided cybersecurity blog DataBreaches.net with a long list of movies and TV shows it claimed to have stolen from Larson Studios, a Hollywood-based audio post-production company. In addition to “Orange Is the New Black,” it also lists a number of high-profile shows from the big broadcast networks, including ABC’s “The Catch,” NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” CBS’ “NCIS Los Angeles,” and Fox’s “New Girl.”

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Other shows included are IFC’s “Portlandia,” FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Breakthrough” from NatGeo, E!’s “The Arrangement,” “Bunk’d” from the Disney Channel, and Netflix’s “Bill Nye Saves the World.” The list also makes mention of a few movies, including the Netflix original “Win It All,” the Lifetime TV movie “A Midsummers Nightmare,” and a YouTube Red Liza Koshy special.

It’s worth noting that this list is by no means confirmed. ABC, NBC, Fox, FX, IFC, and NatGeo all declined to comment when contacted by Variety. CBS and E! did not respond.

Netflix acknowledged the breach in a statement earlier this weekend, saying: “We are aware of the situation. A production vendor used by several major TV studios had its security compromised and the appropriate law enforcement authorities are involved.” The company hasn’t commented on details of the leak.

Also noteworthy: Some of these titles have already been released by the networks, while others are currently in-season. The first season of Netflix’s “Bill Nye Saves the World,” for example, debuted on the streaming service in its entirety earlier this month, which would minimize the damage of any subsequent leak.
TheDarkOverlord suggested on Twitter earlier this weekend that it might be trying to extort Fox, IFC, Nat Geo, and ABC next, but it is unknown whether they may be in the process of trying to extort other studios and networks.

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That was the chilling response TheDarkOverlord gave to The Hollywood Reporter when asked if the hacking collective planned to leak additional Hollywood content in the wake of Monday's release of eight unaired episodes of ABC’s Funderdome.

"Hollywood is under attack, and we're at the forefront of this most recent offensive," wrote the pseudonymous hacking collective to THR. "We're not in the business to scare anyone. We're in the business of earning vast amounts of internet money."

But even more alarming, TheDarkOverlord also claims to have studio movies in addition to the unaired series and films from such networks as IFC and National Geographic that have been been previously reported. Though Netflix and Disney/ABC balked at paying ransom demands, others quietly have paid up, according to knowledgeable sources.

"Make no mistake, Hollywood is under assault," the hacking collective wrote to THR.

The leak of the Steve Harvey-hosted game show marked the second time in the span of five weeks that TheDarkOverlord has struck, leaving Hollywood on edge. On April 28, the group uploaded 10 episodes of the upcoming season of Orange Is the New Black to The Pirate Bay. The fifth season of the Netflix series isn't officially set to begin streaming until Friday.

“There's not much interest in Funderdome on pirate sites probably because it's not widely known to the public yet,” says Ernesto van der Sar of Torrent Freak, which also monitors file-sharing and piracy.

One cybersecurity source who declined to be named suggested that ABC is paying the price for recent comments made by Bob Iger, CEO of parent company Disney, who publicly stated, “To our knowledge we were not hacked. We had a threat of a hack of a movie being stolen.”

The movie in question was widely reported to be Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The source, who called Iger’s comments “a misstep that put a target on Disney’s back,” says the file stolen contained partial footage of Pirates 5 but was deemed not valuable enough to pay a ransom. Though TheDarkOverlord was not the group behind the Disney extortion plot, the hacker community is tightly knit and an affront to one is an affront to all, says the source.

During its breach of postproduction facility Larson Studios in late 2016, TheDarkOverlord lifted properties far more valuable than Funderdome, including CBS’ NCIS: Los Angeles and Fox’s New Girl.

“Hackers are playing reality games of the worst kind — causing real damage after making real threats,” says Hemanshu Nigam, a former federal prosecutor of online crime in Los Angeles and onetime chief security officer for News Corp. “These leaks can directly limit how many viewers will actually watch because the leak spoils the ending.”

But for those viewing pirated goods, nothing comes free. Nigam says hackers often put ransomware into leaked pirated content in an effort to attack the fan base.

“Hackers have paired up with pirates to inject anyone searching or downloading leaked content with malware of all kinds to steal info, spy on you or destroy your computer with ransomware,” says Nigam.

As for a studio that opts to meet the demands, the FBI says that doesn’t always guarantee that the stolen goods will be returned. An agency spokesperson says: “In many cases, hackers do not restore files even after a ransom is paid.”

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Will_H_69_9 said:

why is this hacker group attacking Netflix and TV Networks, why aren't they using their hacking skills to well, hack the Russians, hack the Government to find things that could bring politicians down, why aren't they just focusing on TV only.

i don't really know, and also are these hackers tied to any country like Russia or North Korea.

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