Game of Thrones Spoils of War breaks rating record despite hacking attack

The latest episode of Game of Thrones has broken
viewing records despite it being leaked online.
The hit TV show was targeted by hackers last week,
with the script for Spoils of War, the fourth episode
of the seventh season, leaked online.
That did not stop more than 10 million viewers in the
US from tuning in on Saturday night, HBO's best-ever
live ratings.
It was a 10% increase on last week's episode,
according to Nielsen's Live Metric.
It comes as hackers are said to be demanding
around $6m (£4.6m) from HBO to prevent more
confidential material being released, which reportedly
includes actors' addresses and telephone numbers.
The hackers, who identified themselves using the
collective pseudonym "Mr Smith", sent HBO's boss a
video on Monday, threatening further disclosures.
"We successfully breached into your huge network...
HBO was one of our difficult targets to deal with but
we succeeded (it took about 6 months)," the video
said, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which
said it had also received confidential information
from the hackers.
HBO issued a statement to the Reporter, saying:
"HBO believed that further leaks might emerge from
this cyber incident when we confirmed it last week.
As we said, the forensic review is ongoing.
"While it has been reported that a number of emails
have been made public, the review to date has not
given us a reason to believe that our email system as
a whole has been compromised."

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