HBO reportedly offered $250,000 (£193,000) to the group that hacked its servers under the guise of a “bug bounty”, according to a screenshot of the conversation released by the attackers and seen by the Guardian. HBO came clean about the hack four days after the bug bounty payment was offered, telling the public that it had experienced a “cyber-incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information”. Bug bounty payments are a common occurrence in cybersecurity, designed to encourage third-parties to discover and report weaknesses found in security systems so they can be fixed, rather than sell the information to would-be attackers. At least one Hollywood hack victim has paid the ransom demanded by attackers, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But most victims refuse to talk about the ransom requests, fearing that admission they paid will make them a target for future attacks.

Source: The Guardian August 11, 2017 09:22 UTC