Larson Studios president Rick Larson and his wife and business partner, Jill Larson, didn't recognize the number that sent them these two short text messages via their personal cell phones two days before Christmas last year, so they simply ignored them. "We didn't really think much of them," said Jill Larson.

Little did they know that the messages were part of Hollywood's biggest security breach since the Sony Pictures hack of 2014. But in an exclusive interview with Variety, the Larson Studios principals are breaking their silence on an incident that threatened the existence of their family-owned audio post-production business. An incident that led them to quietly wire more than $50,000 in extortion money to a group of hackers, only to see some of the most valuable works of their clients, including 10 unreleased episodes of Netflix drama series "Orange Is the New Black," leak online.

Both Larsons got another message from the same number on Christmas Eve. "Why are you ignoring me, check your email for a message that will change your life," that vaguely threatening message read. They still weren't too concerned — but quickly changed their minds when the email arrived a day later. A hacking group calling itself the Dark Overlord told them it had broken into Larson's server, and was threatening to leak all of the company's data.

Larson Studios chief engineer David Dondorf and director of digital systems Chris Unthank left their families on Christmas morning and rushed to the studio to examine the hackers' claims. "Once I was able to look at our server, my hands started shaking, and I almost threw up," Unthank remembered. The hackers had stolen and deleted all of the data, just as they had threatened in their letter. They demanded ransom payments via the crypto-currency Bitcoin to return what they had stolen. Unthank and Dondorf unplugged everything, and Dondorf immediately called the FBI.

Hackers leaked 10 episodes of "Orange Is the New Black" more than a month before the show was to premiere when Netflix refused ransom demands.

But the authorities weren't much help on Christmas morning. "They were, I think, sympathetic, a bit overwhelmed," recalled Jill Larson, vice president and head of administration at the company, which has been in business in Hollywood since 2002. The FBI asked for a form to be filled out, and it was. But forms don't tell you how to respond to ransom demands from hackers with sinister names. So Larson Studios hired private data security experts to find out what had happened — and what to do next.