Hackers have reportedly stolen a digital copy of the new Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and are holding it to ransom, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Multiple sources say the revelation came from an ABC town hall meeting in New York where Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that one of Disney’s films was being held ransom by hackers.

While it was originally rumoured that the digital copy was in fact an early version of Star Wars: The Last Jedi it appears as though that has been debunked in favour of the new Pirates film.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth film in the billion dollar series featuring Johnny Depp in the lead role as Captain Jack Sparrow.

While movie piracy has been rife since the days of VHS the idea of holding a film to ransom is actually relatively new.

The rise of digital filming and storage has lead to new vulnerabilities for the industry and it’s something that criminals have taken full advantage of.

Just last month a hacker called ‘The Dark Overlord’ obtained the entire fifth season of Orange Is The New Black and tried demanding a ransom from Netflix.

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Netflix refused to negotiate with the hacker and as a result the entire season was uploaded to the internet.

As the crime is still relatively new, it’s not clear yet whether Disney will decide to pay the probably extortionate ransom or just take the blow of having it illegally uploaded onto the web.

Hacking has been front and centre in the news at the moment after the massive cyberattack that saw hundreds of organisations around the globe affected by the WannaCry piece of ransomware.

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