Pierluigi Paganini
August 21, 2017
Cyber criminals claiming to have hacked television group HBO networks were demanding millions of dollars in ransom payments from the company while threatening to release more material.
The worst news for HBO is that the hackers are also claiming to be in possession of login credentials to access “many HBO platforms already.”
“And while the latest data dump doesn’t include any Game of Thrones spoilers, it definitely contains some information that the network wouldn’t want out in the open.” reported Mashable.
“Specifically, what appears to be the login credentials for almost every single HBO social media account. Passwords for everything from @HBO, @GameOfThrones, and @WestworldHBO to various Instagram and Giphy accounts were in a text document provided to us by the so-called “Mr. Smith group.”
For legal reasons, journalists at Mashable did not attempt to login into the accounts provided by Mr. Smith, but they explained that they have no reason to doubt their authenticity. If confirmed this means that hackers gained access to almost every single HBO social media account.
The hackers reportedly defaced HBO Giphy accounts, including one titled “HB-Old Is Dying,” which repeated the previous message that “HBO is falling.”
HBO replied to the threat with its past statement: “We are not in communication with the hacker, and we’re not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released. It has been widely reported that there was a cyber incident at HBO. The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That’s a game we’re not going to participate in.”
Mr. Smith requested HBO half of the group’s annual budget of $12 million to $15 million to stop leaking the files.
The hackers claim a long work to compromise the company network, it took six months to break into the company systems, they also added to have purchased $500,000 a year zero-day exploits that let them hack the firm exploiting flaws in Microsoft and other software used by HBO.
According to a report from a leaked memo by Variety, in response to the incident, HBO offered a reward of $250,000. The payment was offered as a “bug bounty,” to discover vulnerabilities in their its computer networks.
Unfortunately, “Mr. Smith” and his crew weren’t satisfied by the offer that doesn’t match their millionaire demands to stop leaking sensitive data, the crooks’ request would be more than $6 million.
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(Security Affairs – Game of Thrones, data breach)
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