HBO Offered Hackers $250,000 To Prevent Leaks

You might have heard by now that HBO has been hit by a cyberattack. Reports suggest that 1.5TB of data has been stolen from the cable giant’s servers. We’ve already seen leaked scripts of unaired Game of Thrones episodes and it’s said that unaired episodes of some other shows have been leaked as well. According to a new report, HBO offered hackers $250,000 as a “bug bounty payment” to prevent these leaks.

The hackers behind it all have leaked a screenshot of an email which shows that a senior HBO vice president offered them $250,000 as a “bug bounty payment.” The email is dated July 27 and was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

The email indicates that a negotiation was going on between the network and the hackers. HBO’s response has been worded carefully so that it doesn’t seem like the cable giant is paying them a ransom, it gives the impression that HBO is offering them a reward for discovering vulnerabilities in its system.

“As a show of good faith on our side, we are willing to commit to making a bug bounty payment of $250,000 to you as soon as we can establish the necessary account and acquire bitcoin,” the email reads.

It’s believed that the hackers are demanding millions in Bitcoin from HBO to stop leaking more content. It’s not entirely known at this point in time what other data they’ve managed to obtain from HBO’s systems. The cable giant has not yet commented on the leaked email.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: hbo, _cold