Game of Thrones season 7 episode 7 may be leaked by HBO hackers 'as soon as possible'

The HBO hackers, going by the pseudonym Mr. Smith, have reportedly threatened to leak the final episode of Game of Thrones (GoT) season 7. The hackers also allegedly claimed to be in possession of login credentials for nearly all HBO social media accounts.

The hackers reportedly warned the public to "be ready" for the release of the final episode of the latest GoT season, adding that they plan to leak the episode "as soon as possible." Mashable reported that the Mr. Smith hackers provided them with a list of login credentials for various HBO social media accounts, including the Twitter accounts @HBO, @GameOfThrones, @WestworldHBO, as well as several Instagram and Giphy accounts.

The hackers have reportedly previously demanded a $6.5m ransom in bitcoins from the network. Last week, the hackers leaked emails allegedly detailing HBO's attempt to disguise a ransom payment as a bug bounty payoff of around $250,000 (£192,827).

"We are not in communication with the hacker and we're not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released," HBO told Mashable, referring to a previous statement. "It has been widely reported that there was a cyber incident at HBO. The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That's a game we're not going to participate in."

The Mr. Smith hackers have previously claimed to have stolen around 1.5 TB of data from HBO, and have also recently leaked unaired episodes from around 10 HBO shows.

Over the past few weeks, the hackers have leaked several unaired GoT episodes and also allegedly leaked scripts of unaired GoT episodes.

Hacker group OurMine also recently claimed responsibility for hacking into the Twitter accounts of HBO and Game of Thrones.

It is unclear how HBO plans to stop such leaks in the future. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in GoT, told Entertainment Weekly that last year, the network had created numerous email accounts for the actors of the show. "And, of course, now they have this big hack! And then we get a call [saying] 'They have all your information. And we're not sure what's going to happen'," the actor said.

"I think they're basically going to go back to hand-delivering and just giving us scripts. Just give us the hard copies instead of all this email and digital stuff," Coster-Waldau added.