The cable television network, HBO is looking to acquiring $250,000 worth of Bitcoin to pay off a group of hackers who made off with 1.5TB of data from their servers.
According to Bitcoin News, HBO was compromised for over 1.5TB of internal data that hosted unaired shows, documentaries, in-house movies, scripts, high-profile emails and contacts, and broadcast pilots.
The hackers who stole the information from HBO say they earn 15 million a year, and want half of their salaries paid for the stolen data.
According to the report, the thieves managed to leak a few unaired episodes of the network’s original shows and a Game of Thrones script from this Sunday’s new episode.
They are threatening to release the CEO, Richard Plepler’s email list with over 40,000 contacts which include the phone numbers, emails, and living addresses of the entire Game of Thrones cast.
It also stated that the hackers who call themselves "Mr Smith" according to CNBC, want a total of $7.5M in bitcoin for the cache of data or else they will slowly release a hoard of HBO’s unreleased shows.
Now I understand why companies like Apple are offering hackers, researchers and cryptographers up to $200,000 to find security loopholes in its products. I hope HBO will learn from that.
What do you think?