Spoils Of War: Indian Police Arrest Four For Game Of Thrones Leak

Police in India have arrested four IT workers suspected of leaking the Series 7, episode 4 the “Spoils of War”, days before it was aired.

All four of the accused were arrested and appeared before a judge and will be detained in custody for at least a week. Police in India claim that all four accused had major roles in the leaking the episode online. Episode four of the seventh season was leaked on 4 August, just days before it was due to air globally. Three of the accused are current employees of Prime Focus Technology, while one is a former employee.

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

Server leak

Prime Focus, a Mumbai-based company is responsible for storing and processing the series for the Indian based streaming website Hotstar, lodged the original complaint themselves with police when they realized that the episode may have been leaked from their own servers.

“Officers of the Cyber & PAW conducted preliminary enquiry and basis of the electronic trail and other technical material, zeroed in on Prime Focus Technologies,’ said a statement from Prime Focus. “Authorities swooped in on the Bengaluru office of Prime Focus Technologies from where the leakage was apprehended to have occurred and carried out interrogation of the employees throughout the night on August 11,” the statement added.

Not the first

Game of Thrones, produced by HBO, has seen several leaks over the years, with the fantasy epic having the dubious title of being the most pirated shown in TV history.

This leak isn’t however related to the the recent hack from last week when HBO’s own servers were hacked and hackers claimed to have stolen up to 1.5 Terra-bytes of data, including unaired episodes of series Ballers, Room 104, and confidential scripts and plot lines of future episodes, some of which have also been leaked online.

“We investigated the case and have arrested four individuals for unauthorized publication of the fourth episode from season seven,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told the AFP news agency.

In the Game of Thrones, you either win, or you die, I suppose.