Episode 1 of the highly anticipated 6th season of "24" has been leaked onto BitTorrent, even Jack Bauer couldn't stop it. For those unlucky chaps who don't know, 24 is the wildly popular TV show that has fans the world over dying for each new episode.

The leak is the work of AsiaTeam, a Spanish language group known to regularly upload TV shows and movies to BitTorrent. Several commenters on mininova are convinced that these are “the real thing” and not fakes. A contact who says she downloaded the torrent just confirmed that it is in fact 100% real.

From the screenshots (1, 2, 3) posted on mininova, it seems the AsiaTeam guys have not only episode 1, but the entire Season 6 Premiere DVD that will be released on January 16th. This DVD contains the the first 4 episodes (screenshot) of 24 season 6, and a preview of episode 5.

And just to spice things up, here’s an exclusive:

Even though my colleague at TorrentFreak tells me it is completely normal in the world of BitTorrent for TV shows to be leaked, I am amazed that something like this could happen.

In July 2005, the pilot episodes of 5 upcoming TV series were leaked onto BitTorrent. Although many believed that it was ABC themselves who had leaked the episodes to get the hype going, it is unlikely that a mainstream content producer would do such a thing. Many upcoming episodes of the TV series Prison Break, among others, have been routinely leaked onto the Internet, and in particular, BitTorrent.

We can’t link to the torrent for obvious reasons, but it’s not hard to find.

update: episode 2, 3 and 4 are out