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Contents:
The Internet had a field day recently after thousands of HBO Max subscribers received strange emails titled “Integration Test Email #1”.
Integration testing represents the phase in software testing in which individual software modules are combined and tested as a group. This type of testing is conducted in order to evaluate the compliance of a system or component with specified functional requirements, and it takes place after unit testing and before validation testing.
Most likely the email was a mistake made by an HBO Max developer or marketing person that was probably performing some tests on the platform and mistakenly sent out an email to all of the streaming network’s subscribers.
There is no information comprised in the email as it simply has the subject of “Integration Test Email #1″ followed by a short message that states, “This template is used by integration tests only”.
If the HBO Max email sent out of the blue to its subscribers wasn’t bad enough, HBO Max’s Twitter account blamed an intern for the mistakenly sent email blast.
We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologize for the inconvenience, and as the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we’re helping them through it. ❤️
— HBOMaxHelp (@HBOMaxHelp) June 18, 2021
The email sent by HBO was delivered through Sendgrid, a popular email marketing platform used by many companies, and it was likely a marketing test that got blasted out to all registered HBO Max accounts by mistake.
The recipients of the email have gathered on Twitter to have a fun time making lighthearted jokes about the HBO Max email.
Dear Intern,
I fixed a 500 error at @Blizzard_Ent, and the result of fixing this 500 error was to leak the Blizzcon 2016 schedule.
Much love <3
— Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev) June 18, 2021
As a recipient of the Hawaii missile alert, I felt well prepared to field HBO Max Integration Test Email #1.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 18, 2021
The difference between HBO Go and HBO Max is that HBO Max includes every season Integration Test Email #1
— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) June 18, 2021
Even if the email was harmless, the incident raises some safety concerns as it seems that the HBO Max developers were conducting tests in a production environment and not in a test environment.
It’s worth bringing to attention the fact that criminals might try to mimic the email in order to use it for phishing campaigns, therefore users should pay close attention to all email communications they will be receiving.
Dora is a digital marketing specialist within Heimdal™ Security. She is a content creator at heart - always curious about technology and passionate about finding out everything there is to know about cybersecurity.
