Cyber pirates hold Disney's upcoming 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie hostage, demanding ransom

Real pirates have taken Captain Jack Sparrow hostage
Disney CEO Bob Iger had a bomb shell revelation he unloaded on shocked ABC television staffers at a company town hall meeting in New York City on Monday: the Walt Disney Company, creators of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, are being blackmailed by real online pirates.

Apparently video hackers have stolen a copy of one of Disney's major upcoming summer tent-pole movie, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," the fifth installment in the highly profitable swashbuckling franchise starring Johnny Depp, and are threatening to release it online, initially in chopped-up segments, unless Disney gives into the video blackmailers' demands and pays a huge ransom.

If Disney does not give into the hackers' demands, the digital extortionists are then threatening to release the entire movie online for free before the movie's official release date on May 26th.

In true online hacker style, Iger said that the video pirates in question demanded the huge ransom be paid by the House of Mouse in Bitcoin.

Although Iger didn't identify the movie in question that was stolen, a person with inside knowledge of the situation, who was not authorized to comment for Disney, said the movie that was hacked was indeed the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequel, which is slated to open nationwide on Memorial Day weekend.


The pirating blackmailers threatened that they would release pieces of the hostage movie, at first, chopped up in five minutes pieces, then they would increase those segments released to 20 minutes chunks until finally the entire movie is released online unless their financial demands are met.


Thus far, Disney is refusing to give into the extortionists and is working with federal investigators to catch the video pirates involved in the horrifying blackmailing scheme.  The studio had no public comments on the reports thus far.

Blackmailers have threatened to release Disney's latest installment of the 'Pirates
of the Caribbean' franchise online unless Disney gives into the blackmailers' demands
Rampant digital piracy has become the scourge of Hollywood in recent years, threatening to topple the entire multi-billion dollar industry of movie-making and television.

Just this past March, head of Disney's film distribution, Dave Hollis, gave a sobering keynote speech at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas at CinemaCon, Hollywood's annual gathering of movie studios and theater owners.

Hollis confirmed that the number of movie tickets sold (1.32 billion last year versus 1.4 billion a decade ago) were on the decline, compared to years past.

More over, per capita attendance, the average number of times each person bought a movie ticket, is also on the decline.


Last year, per capita attendance fell by more than 1%, suggesting the studio system is again on the demise.
  
   
More importantly, Hollis acknowledged that box office numbers are expected to remain relatively flat over the next several years, reaching $11.5 billion in 2020, according to analysts' forecasts.

   
Movie attendance numbers among key marketing age demographics of 18-39-year-olds are down significantly from five years ago, he noted.

 
Disney blamed the worrisome numbers on an increasing number of new digital entertainment options that are available to consumers, including pirated videos of movies and television shows that are streamed online and available for downloading on video pirating sites like Pirate Bay, Putlocker, WatchFree, UWatchFree, Viooz, etc.

Captain Jack Sparrow played by Johnny Depp
Hackers had also launched the largest ransomware attack in history this past week when they weaponized a weakness in Microsoft's Windows operating system in a worldwide "WannaCry" computer virus attack, which is thought to be a state-sponsored cyber attack by the government of North Korea.

When the virus finds its way onto a Windows PC, data is encrypted that locks out users from accessing their computers. They are then told they must pay $300 in electronic funds on Bitcoin to receive a key to unlock their computers.

So far, over 200,000 victims have been hit by the virus spread over at least 150 countries worldwide, including Britain's National Health Service, numerous government offices around the world, and major multinational companies such as FedEx, Hitachi, Nissan, and Sandvik.


The "WannaCry" viral malware itself was apparently hacked into from the National Security Agency (NSA), which was then given the codename "EternalBlue" by the agency and was routinely stockpiled along with a number of other dangerous computer viruses and malware for classified reasons by the U.S. intelligence community.

The worldwide 'WannaCry' ransomware attack this week show that cyber
blackmail is a growing concern for everyone
Hackers became aware that the NSA stockpiled weaponized versions of computer viruses that could stop computer systems worldwide in their tracks after WikiLeaks published information about the computer virus stockpiling program at the NSA.

After WikiLeaks let the cat out of the bag, hackers began to attack the NSA to try to steal these highly classified computer viruses for nefarious purposes that the NSA had stockpiled on their servers.

The blackmail attempt against Disney comes on the heels of another similar video extortion plot against Netflix last month by video pirates who hacked into 10 unreleased episodes of the new season of their online television series Orange is the New Black.

Video pirates threatened and made good on their promise to release the episodes online before they aired on Netflix because the company refused to pay an undisclosed amount in ramsom.


The episodes were posted on Pirate Bay six week ahead of the series' official season premiere slated on June 9th when Netflix defiantly refused to give into the blackmail threats.


Clearly, the digital disruption of Hollywood's film and television industry from the ever-changing digital consumer-friendly media landscape online has taken and will continue to take its toll on major multinational media conglomerates, like the Walt Disney Company, unless they are able to adapt to the new digital media landscape.
  

Thus, with this latest revelation, it is confirmed that Hollywood, much like other major Fortune 500 companies, is under attack from digital hackers.
  
  
Stay tuned as we are the best news source to report on where pirated copies of the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" will be leaked online.


Sources:

    Comments

    Post a Comment