by Wareez Odunayo

An unreleased series of Game of Thrones has surfaced online ahead of its TV premiere on Sunday.

Episode 4 of Season 7 of the show appeared on the internet early Friday morning. But the leaked version appeared in a low-quality format.

Early this week, Home Box Office (HBO), the premium cable and satellite television network owned by Time Warner was subject to a security breach allowing hackers to get away with 1.5 terabytes of stolen data from the company’s US servers.

According to report, the leaking of the episode wasn’t from the recent HBO security breach, but from a distribution partner, Star India. Hackers have so far only published script outlines on the web, rather than full episodes.

Over the years, HBO has battled with leaks of Game of Thrones. The first four episodes of Season 5 appeared online, also HBO subsidiary released a season 6 episode a day before it formal debut.

HBO opted to stop screeners for season 7, but that hasn’t stopped another episode leaking.

In the same vein, the hackers who leaked unaired episodes of HBO’s shows, including ‘Game of Thrones’, have also threatened to release additional content on Sunday.

This was contained in an automated email reply forwarded to Variety.com  by the hacker group. It said it would release the leak gradually every week and added that the next release may come this Sunday at 12 GMT (5 pm IST).

Inasmuch as some keen followers of the show will not mind a leak of some of the show’s episodes, this is one leak too many, and HBO needs to act fast, else it begins to lose credibility.

Editor