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A group of hackers who call themselves "mr smith" has hacked a file from the HBO servers, the hackers are said to have compromised HBO of over 1.5TB internal data that hosted documents, movie scripts ,unaired shows ,high profile emails/contacts and other vital things.

Continue Reading => https://zycrypto.com/game-throne-hackers-demand-ransom-btcoin/

Hackers can easily take payment in any currency. Bitcoin is irrelevant to the fact that hackers demand payment in bitcoins. They are people too and realize that bitcoin is the future. Seriously the hackers help people not to forget about security and maybe it will help to save more information in the future.

I wonder how will HBO buy 7.5 million of BTC to pay the hacker. Which exchange is willing to sell this much of BTC?

Companies really just need to bear through it and let the stuff leak, if they pay the money they will only get hacked again and then charged more the next time.

It is not actually the fault of Bitcoin why it has become the preferred choice of currency to be used in their criminal acts. You are right, hackers can use other currencies like the US dollar and nobody would be mentioning that the hackers used the dollar as the currency of choice. Bitcoin is still relatively new that is why it can easily be associated with people who are using it rather than rely on its own name. HBO should beef their wall protection and security so they can avoid the same thing happening again in the future.

Already a thread on this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2080439.0

Problems like this just prove that many high profile/big companies lack the necessary security that they should have. Their business is dealing with important digital files that can be stolen when left unprotected (like what just happened). Many people should see this coming (BTC as mode of payment) as this will make it very hard for the authorities to track down the ransom that will be paid by HBO. This should leave a proper lesson to HBO and to other companies that they should take their cyber security seriously.

Thats rich :D

They picked bitcoin because its semi difficult to trace bitcoin. Trust and believe if they had used any fiat, or a payment gateway like Visa or MC, even Paypal, the feds would have already kicked in the door. White/grey hat hackers are kosher; black hat hackers are pretty much all scumbag steves. There is a reason why ransomware almost universally asks for bitcoin or stored value card redeem codes; they are easy to liquidate without having to KYC/verify/ appear on a CCTV.

bitcoin has been taking ALOT of black eyes lately. dark markets, kidnapped models, and monolithic money launderers. this is killing the damned brand, its really not cute  :-\

If i will the HBO i will not negotiate with these people because they will do it again and again because another group of hacker will arise to ask for money again. Instead they spend there money on how to catch these guys or strengthen there system so that it will not be hacked anymore.

Aww…man, this is really, really bad. I wonder how they will get such an amount of BTC, maybe they will go from one exchanger to another demanding for Bitcoin. This is one thing about Bitcoin, being difficult to trace. And people are now trying to use it negatively.

They actually tried not to negotiate first but with so many vital data and other info the hackers got, HBO was left with no choice but to deal with the hackers and pay ransom in bitcoin.

Those hackers will ruin an awesome movie series! But then again, they're promoting Bitcoin at the same time.  ;D

It's really sad that happens to HBO and since hackers have asked ransom in bitcoin, it damages the reputation of bitcoin. Common people will think bitcoin is bad and the currency of the hackers. however, the fact is, the majority of the bitcoin users are simple common man who just earn some extra bucks in bitcoin or invest in bitcoin thinking about future appreciation.

In the recent past, "Ransonware" shook the corporate world and now this. In both cases, bitcoin was the preferred currency for them which is really sad. We need to understand that bitcoin is not bad, only some people associated with bitcoin are bad and using bitcoin is a wrong way.

Yeah this is bad, it will ruined Bitcoin reputation and this negative labels will stick on Bitcoin when we introduce Bitcoin to other people, and this year the ransomware case using Bitcoin has been increasing, this can be caused the banned from the government, it is a wrong and bad way to used bitcoin