A hacker who claimed to have stolen the forthcoming season of Netflix’s hit series Orange is the New Black and demanded a ransom payment claimed on Saturday to have followed through on its threat to release several episodes online.
The hacker, operating under the name The Dark Overlord, initially demanded that Netflix pay an unspecified ransom to prevent all the new episodes from being prematurely released online.
The hacker had already purportedly uploaded the first episode to an illegal file-sharing service. The authenticity of that uploaded file could not be legally confirmed.
Early on Saturday, the hacker announced the move to release the episodes on Twitter. The post included a link to an illegal file-sharing service where purportedly 10 episodes from the series’ fifth season were available for download. The authenticity of those files could not be legally confirmed.
New episodes of the series are scheduled for official release on 9 June. Netflix did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the apparent release of 10 episodes.
Earlier, it said that a small production vendor that works with several major TV studios had suffered a breach. The company, based in Los Gatos, California, described the breach as an “active situation” that was being investigated by the FBI and other authorities.
Pirated copies of the show could dent Netflix’s subscriber growth and the company’s stock price.
In the ransom note, The Dark Overlord claimed to have stolen series from other studios by breaking into a single company. The purported hacker promised to also release those titles unless “modest” ransoms were paid.
Rumours of a massive leak of Hollywood films and TV episodes have been circulating online for months, fed by purported screenshots of footage and a copy of a proposed deal to delete the stolen material in return for tens of thousands of dollars in electronic currency.
When the Associated Press contacted The Dark Overlord in February, the hacker said the stolen video would not be made publicly available after all, making the far-fetched claim that “no one really [cares] about unreleased movies and TV show episodes.”
It is not clear what triggered The Dark Overlord’s renewed ransom demands or apparent decision to release the episodes of Orange is the New Black.
Netflix is counting onthe prison drama to help it add 3.2 million subscribers from April through June, a figure substantially higher than the company’s average gain of 1.8 million subscribers in the same period over the past five years.
If Netflix’s quarterly subscriber gains fall shy of management projections, the company’s stock price usually plunges.