HBO hackers leak unaired episodes of 'Curb'

Highly anticipated return of Larry David’s sitcom for 9th season dampened by dump of several of its episodes

Hackers continued to pester HBO this week, releasing several unaired episodes of Jewish comedian Larry David’s hit sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

After a six-year hiatus, “Curb” is scheduled to return for a highly anticipated 9th season in October.

Though no new material on the network’s prized “Game of Thrones” series was leaked, the latest dump also includes Sunday night’s episode of “Insecure,” another popular show, and what appear to be episodes of other lower-profile shows, including “Ballers,” the unaired shows “Barry” and “The Deuce,” a comedy special and other programming.

HBO acknowledged the hack in late July, and the thieves have been dribbling out stolen video and documents since then while demanding a multimillion-dollar ransom.

They have leaked “Game of Thrones” scripts, sensitive internal documents like job offer letters and a month’s worth of emails from a programming executive. But the intrusion has so far fallen well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony when the studio was hacked in 2014.

Still, the criminals may be holding on to more damaging data — both intellectual property, like unaired programming, and sensitive personal information of HBO employees — that they can use as leverage to try to get money from HBO, said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

“It’s kind of like kidnap and ransom and torture,” she said. “Eventually HBO may have to give in.”

In an emailed statement Sunday, HBO said it’s “not going to participate” in what it described as attempts to generate attention by dropping “bits and pieces of stolen information.” The company added that it was not in communication with the hackers. It has said previously that it doesn’t believe its email system as a whole was breached.