Pierluigi Paganini January 17, 2017

On Monday, Russian State Television Channel One leaked online the BBC Sherlock Final episode, the broadcaster blames hackers.

On Monday, a Russian state television Channel One blamed hackers for the leak online of the final episode of the BBC drama Sherlock a day before its actual planning.

The Russian Channel One was set to transmit the end-of-season episode of the fourth series of Sherlock the detective on Monday just after midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT), simultaneously with the UK.

“The BBC is trying to establish whether an episode of Sherlock was deliberately leaked from within the offices of a Russian state broadcaster, after last night’s hotly-anticipated series finale was circulated on the internet ahead of transmission.” Reported The Telegraph.

“A Russian-language version of the 90-minute episode, entitled The Final Problem, appeared online on Saturday, featuring a three-second continuity announcement identifying it as having originated from Channel One, which holds the rights to air Sherlock in Russia.”

According to the Russian broadcaster, hackers broke into its system and leaked online a full episode professionally dubbed into the Russian language. Of course, copies of the final episode of the BBC drama Sherlock appeared across numerous sites.

“According to preliminary findings, the cause was a hacker attack,” Channel One spokeswoman Larisa Krymova revealed to the AFP.

[the channel] “has been in close contact with the BBC from the moment it learnt of the leak and is carrying out an investigation to identify the source of the material uploaded onto the Internet.”

[Channel One]” will be ready to share full information on the incident with colleagues after the investigation is completed,” explained the Channel One spokeswoman.

The BBC confirmed it had launched an investigation on the case.

“We have brought everything up to beyond gold standard, which is why things like this are so surprising. This is more than an accident.” stated a source at the corporation. 

“BBC Worldwide takes breaches of our stringent content security protocols very seriously and we have initiated a full investigation into how this leak has occurred.” said a BBC spokesman. 

The show’s producer Sue Vertue invited Sherlock fans to avoid sharing the illegal copy of the final episode.

Russian version of #Sherlock TFP has been illegally uploaded.Please don't share it. You've done so well keeping it spoiler free.Nearly there

— sue vertue (@suevertue) January 14, 2017

Analysts believe that the attack was politically motivated, the attack can be considered a Russia’s retaliation against the BBC.

“There appears to be no profit motive, no benefit to the broadcaster from doing this. What remains is a political motive. The most obvious explanation is that this is punitive.” explained Ben Nimmo, information fellowdefence at the Atlantic Council think tank.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Russian Channel One, hacking)