The first ten episodes of the fifth season of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black were leaked online over the weekend by a hacker entity known as TheDarkOverlord, alleging that a Hollywood production studio refused to pay them a bitcoin ransom for the stolen content.
This may not be TheDarkOverlord’s first time at the rodeo. As Motherboard reported back in 2016, the hacker group claimed to be ransoming the personal healthcare records of three different American healthcare organizations on the dark web for over half a million dollars.
While TheDarkOverlord is a pretty generic hacker name, if the same group or person is responsible for these two events and other past hacks, someone appears to have had enough. On Sunday, an anonymous Pastebin post appeared claiming to dox the hacker behind the Orange is the New Black leak.
Vigilanteism is common practice among many hackers and maybe this anonymous poster isn’t into TheDarkOverlord’s interest in hacking for profitable gain. TheDarkOverlord has also claimed to be a group, so doxing a specific person could be futile. (Perhaps the anonymous post is a ruse coming from TheDarkOverlord themselves.)
What we do know is that the hacker group has had a pretty open discourse with the media over the weekend in lieu of the leaks. The group published a statement about the leaks on Pastebin, but it has since been removed. However, in an interview with TorrentFreak published Saturday, TheDarkOverlord revealed exactly how they managed to obtain the contraband content and then tried to flip it back to the source for a price. The group gained access to the systems of Larson Studios, an audio post production studio based in Hollywood that is working on the series.
After obtaining what they wanted, TheDarkOverlord told TorrentFreak it attempted to negotiate with Larsen Studios.
“After we had a copy of their data safely in our possession, we asked that we be paid a small fee in exchange for non-disclosure. We approached them on the Eve of their Christmas,” a member of the group told TorrentFreak over an encrypted channel.
After several months of negotiations fell through, the leaks were posted on Twitter — and the rest is history.
The hacker group is also hinting that this may be just the tip of the iceberg. TheDarkOverlord claims to be in possession of a hefty amount of un-released video, suggesting content from places such as Fox, IFC, National Geographic, and ABC via Twitter.
On Sunday night, perhaps riding the momentum of the OITNB leak, the group hinted that it was almost time to “play another round.”
