Twice-Hacked HBO Offers $250,000 to Mr. Smith Attackers

Hacked TV giant HBO has offered a “goodwill” payment of $250,000 to ‘Mr. Smith’ attackers threatening to publish more classified material.

Details of correspondence four days after the initial hack began on July 23 shows an executive suggesting the offer, which was considerably below the hackers’ demands of $6 mln in Bitcoin.

As Deadline reports quoting anonymous sources, the offer is genuine, contrary to others surfacing from alternative correspondence between HBO and the malicious party.

Comparisons are being drawn between HBO, which has seen items such as Game of Thrones script information leaked, and other high-profile entertainment hacks such as Sony in 2014 and more recently Netflix.

Unlike Sony, however, the amount of information in play from HBO appears to be both much smaller and much less significant.

“If they [the hackers] had something they would have put it out there by now like what happened with Netflix,” an “industry insider” told Deadline.

“Either they didn’t get far, there wasn’t a lot to get or what they got is in too many pieces to add up to much.”