For months, the movie industry has been battling movie pirates who have hacked TV series and pre-release films from Netflix and Walt Disney with ransom threats.

But for once, the FBI has scored a victory. The feds nabbed six hackers in India earlier this month. The score was a result of tracking down the criminals to a movie theater where a digital key was used to unlock the movie, download it and hold it for ransom.

The movie was marked with a watermark:

In most instances when movies are tracked in this manner, it’s because a watermark identifying the location has been transferred to a ‘cam’ copy. However, in this case the original ‘pirate’ copy had been made digitally. This meant that someone had managed to get hold of the encryption key used to decrypt titles subject to digital distribution.

However, it is only one win in a series of thefts and ransom demands. Netflix saw its next installment of Orange is the New Black stolen and held for ransom. The company refused to pay the ransom and a hacker uploaded 10 episodes of the upcoming season to The Pirate Bay.

The volume of thefts is overwhelming the FBI. The FBI’s surprising advice: pay the ransom.

Source: Naked Security