With AAP.
Winter may have taken a long time to finally arrive in Westeros (think six entire seasons), but there’s one thing Game of Thrones related that fans won’t be waiting for any longer: the next episode in the latest season.
Links to the fourth episode of the show’s seventh season, called The Spoils of War, were posted on a discussion board on Reddit.
Shortly after the link appeared, however, it was removed, with a message stating the post “violated GoogleDrive’s [terms of service]”.
Earlier this week, the TV network giant experienced a massive hack of their systems, in which upcoming episodes and scripts from many of their original series were shared online.
The latest hack, however, is not believed to be related, and was instead stolen from one of HBO's international partners, Star India.
A spokesperson for the network, which receives episodes from HBO in advance of their air dates, confirmed the leak.
"This confirms the compromise of episode 4 of Game of Thrones Season 7, earlier this afternoon," they said.
"We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner’s end to swiftly determine the cause.
"This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action."
And that's exactly the reason why you shouldn't go searching for the episode online - there could be major legal ramifications for illegally downloading this, or any, episode.
The show is believed to be the most-pirated of all time, with an 1.77 million Australians downloading the show's most recent episode.
The Six Books Guaranteed To Get You Out Of A Reading Slump
The Spill
