Netflix has found itself as the victim of a new hack, as ten unreleased episodes from the fifth season of Orange is the New Black were apparently stolen by a hacker working under the handle thedarkoverlord, and published to the Pirate Bay, after Netflix refused to pay the demanded ransom. In addition to these episodes, the hackers also obtained content from ABC, Fox, National Geographic, and IFC, through a 2016 attack on Larson Studios, a company that handles post-production work.
While the major studios worked aggressively to improve their security in the wake of the 2014 hack on Sony, third parties still remain a viable target for attack. PwC principal Mark Lobel observed in an interview with Variety “third-party vendors have been a problem for a long time and will continue to be in the future.” With many activities outsourced to these vendors, including visual effects, subtitles, color grading, and audio post-production, these third parties are often small organizations with limited numbers of employees, who potentially lack the resources to maintain a strong security infrastructure. As a result, the overall security of the studios can find itself only as secure as its weakest link.
Sources:
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/orange-is-the-new-black-season-5-hacker-piracy-leak-1202403760/
