For the second time this season, the newest episode of Game Of Thrones has been leaked days before it was set to air—and this time, it was through the HBO organization itself. The upcoming “Death Is The Enemy” was accidentally posted to the HBO Espana and HBO Nordic platforms by a third-party vendor, the network confirms, and was quickly removed after the mistake was caught—though obviously, not before it was captured and uploaded throughout myriad torrent sites and Reddit threads, which is giving rise to widespread spoilers today. Truly, it is a story of palace intrigue and betrayal worthy of George R.R. Martin himself, except with people gloating about seeing a TV show early.
The incident follows the similar leak of the season’s fourth episode just a couple of weeks ago through HBO’s international distributor, Star India, which led to the arrest of four “rogue individuals” within its organization. And it comes amid an overall tense time for HBO, which was recently hit by a security breach that allowed hackers to make off with around 1.5 terabytes of stolen data, then threaten the network by posting executive emails, actors’ personal information, Game Of Thrones script outlines, and new episodes of Insecure and Curb Your Enthusiasm. In a statement, HBO made clear that this latest leak appeared to be a genuine mistake and had nothing to do with its “recent cyber incident,” but still, it does give them a possible way out of paying those ransom demands: They can’t leak something if you just leak it yourselves.