Did HBO Pay Off Its Hackers Not to Leak the 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Finale?
HBO was able to air the "Game of Thrones" season 7 finale without it getting leaked prematurely over the internet. This is despite the hackers who raided the company threatening to release the episode unless the network paid millions of dollars in ransom.
So, what happened? Did HBO capitulate to the cyber criminals or did the hackers get their money some other way? For better or for worse, it appears to be the latter.
Just a day before the episode aired, the hackers, collectively known as "Mr. Smith," leaked the plot of the finale on Reddit as well as the website Mashable. While this was not as devastating as leaking the episode itself, it certainly killed the suspense that HBO has been building up this whole season.
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However, what's even more troubling is the fact that due to HBO refusing to pay the ransom, the hackers had to get their money elsewhere. In this particular incident, that money came from the deep web in the form of buyers.
The hackers reportedly sold the stolen data to three customers in the deep web who paid half the amount they had "requested" in ransom from HBO. This amounts to around $3.25 million worth of Bitcoins for 5 TB of data which included emails from one of HBO's top executives and personal information of actors from "Game of Thrones."
With this revelation, the fallout from the cyber-attack will likely continue in the interstice between season 7 and season 8. According to the hackers, they "will leak many many waves of HBO's internal stuff to punish them for playing us and set an example of greedy corporation."
"Game of Thrones" season 8 is set to begin production this fall and is expected to premiere in the summer of 2018.
