HBO also noticed this bonus episode through its anti-piracy partner Marketly and took action in response. A takedown notice posted in the Lumen Database shows that the company asked Google to remove an “infringing” link to the non-existent release earlier this week.
They’re claiming to own the copyright to the Trojan horse?
"Takedown notice" has legal meaning, it's not some random cease-and-desist letter that you can draft for anything you want and that has no legal weight other than that it might be scary.
The torrent was titled as .mkv (normal and expected) but the actual file was .lnk (not normal)... so you would have had to open a weird random .lnk file to activate the trojan?
I wonder if an automated setup would play it without caring about the extension. If someone had something like Sonarr dropping episodes on a Plex drive, for example.
I believe the torrent included both an .mkv and a malicious .lnk file.
.lnk files are dangerous because they can evade detection and automatically open other files or executable on a computer; AFAIK you would not have had to open the .lnk file yourself.