The Real Reason Hackers Leaked Season 5 of ‘Orange Is the New Black’ (Variety)
Ever since the hacker identifying themselves as TheDarkOverlord released most of the upcoming fifth season of Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” on file sharing networks this past weekend, two questions have been left unanswered: Who are these guys? And why did they do it?
The honest answer to question No. 1 is: We don’t really know, as TheDarkOverlord has successfully managed to keep their identity a secret. Here is how security blogger Graham Cluley put it some seven months ago: “No one knows who TheDarkOverlord is. No one even knows if he or she is one lone hacker, or a group of hackers.”
Here is what we do know, thanks in part to bloggers like Cluley. TheDarkOverlord first appeared online last summer, and has been very busy in the past few months breaking into corporate networks. From what we know, those break-ins all followed a clear pattern: TheDarkOverlord would gain access to a network, copy sensitive data, and then approach the affected company with a ransom demand, threatening to otherwise release the data online — much like it did now with Larson Studios, the company that was doing post-production audio work on “Orange Is the New Black” season 5.