WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
Large companies may spend millions on data security efforts, but every so often, thieves manage to sneak behind a firewall and steal a whole trove of data. The most recent victim was Nickelodeon, and it truly got hit hard: Hackers have infiltrated Nick Jr.’s servers and leaked unaired Peppa Pig plotlines containing spoilers about the importance of sharing.
There’s no question about it: Nick Jr. has a real problem on its hands.
The hackers are ransoming 4.9 terabytes of Peppa Pig rough cuts, scripts, and storyboard files for $10 million in Bitcoin, leaking just enough to prove what they have is legit. While many Peppa diehards are trying to avoid spoilers, plotlines about Peppa playing with her little brother’s dinosaur toy without asking and Peppa not giving Kylie Kangaroo a turn on the swing are now all over Twitter and fan forums.
The leak has also turned a major fan theory on its head, revealing that Pedro Pony should share his birthday cupcakes instead of eating them all while the other students are at recess. For months, fans have amassed clues and posted evidence to message boards suggesting that Pedro should use his birthday cupcakes to practice his counting. With that major twist now out in the open, there’s no doubt that viewership will fall off for the rest of the Peppa Pig season.
“The whole season was building the tension between Peppa and Molly Mole,” wrote user Saltandpeppa on Reddit’s Peppapig forum. “But now that we know that sharing the watering can makes them both happy, it’s not even worth watching.”
The leakers have also threatened to spill the beans on the season finale and disclose why you should always take your shoes off when you go inside the house if the Bitcoin is not transferred to their account by the end of the week.
Wow. We hope that Nick Jr. stays strong and doesn’t give into these hacker demands, and they can put this whole ordeal behind them. After all, anyone who is a real fan of Peppa Pig knows that taking something without asking is a very rude thing to do.
