Episode 4 of this season’s “Game of Thrones” was leaked days before it is set to air, but the leak is not related to a recent HBO hack.
The episode, called “The Spoils of War,” will air this Sunday, but was released online Friday morning on a Reddit discussion board.
HBO confirmed the leak to The Verge, saying it came from Star India, a distribution partner whose watermark appears throughout the leaked episode. Star India also confirmed the leak and said it is investigating who was responsible.
“We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner’s end to swiftly determine the cause. This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action,” Star India said, The Verge reported.
“Game of Thrones” is believed to be the most-pirated TV show of all time, with the first four episodes of Season 5 being copied from review screeners and posted online, and an episode of Season 6 being leaked after it was accidentally made available on HBO Nordic.
A massive HBO leak was reported Monday that resulted in 1.5 terabytes of documents and files being stolen, including unaired episodes of several shows and scripts of future “Game of Thrones” episodes, which were posted online earlier in the week.
A security company has reported thousands of internal documents were taken, and said the email system also was hacked. It was not clear whether private company emails also were compromised by the hack.