A hacking group has uploaded ten unseen episodes of Netflix’s popular prison drama Orange is the New Black to Pirate Bay after failing to extort money from the online streaming service.
The group, which calls itself the Dark Overlord, is now threatening to release other upcoming shows and films after Netflix refused to hand over a ransom.
After claiming to have stolen the material from Los Angeles post-production service Larson Studio, the cyber extortion collective demanded Netflix hand over 50 Bitcoins (€65,521) to stop it publishing the unseen episodes.
The company did not respond, and as of last night, the stolen material was available for download on the notorious file sharing site, which has been blocked in a number of European countries.
In a statement that has since been removed from Pastebin, the Dark Overlord said: “We naturally approached Netflix and the others in an attempt to devise a mutually-beneficial arrangement where we are paid and Netflix and friends don’t wake up to find their hard work plastered on the internet.
“Our proposals went unanswered so our hands have been forced. We were quite offended by our targets’ responses (or lack thereof).”
While the group only posted material belonging to Netflix over the weekend, it claims to be in possession new shows from broadcasters including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Disney Channel, NatGeo, and others.
Addressing these companies, the collective said: “And to the others: there’s still time to save yourselves. Our offers are still on the table – for now.”
Netflix refused to say whether it planned to pay the ransom demanded by the hackers, but issued a statement 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 FBI is now said to be investigating the Dark Overlord, which has previously attempted to extort money from healthcare providers after stealing sensitive patient medical records.
The Dark Overlord group’s modus operandi is indicative of how hackers – including state-sponsored groups – are now increasingly attacking IT services companies to access the networks of large companies and public bodies.
Analysts have suggested that Netflix and other content producers will choose to ride out the storm without handing the hackers any cash, owing to the fact that few viewers will go to the trouble of downloading the software required to download the shows when they are due to be released in the near future.
Writing for Bloomberg, founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti Leonid Bershidsky said that the group’s inability to extract a ransom from Netflix demonstrates that “subscription-based business models in content distribution is making piracy pointless”, and that copyright holders’ “slowness in adopting these models is the only reason content is still being pirated”.
