The HBO hacker is back in the spotlight. Just a week ago, a hacker (or heckers) leaked the scripts for the episodes of his last four series Game of Thrones, but also the personal castphone numbers of the series.
Today, the hacker released one message email he received from HBO executives offering him $250.000 as part of the bug bounty program.
Bug bounties are typically cash rewards offered to ethical hackers who point out flaws security in enterprise systems. This hacker, however, exploited the flaw in an attempt to cause damage on HBO, and so it's very surprising that the network tries to reward him.
The move seems to be a game to buy HBO time until it understands the full extent of the violation.
But we have to ask ourselves whether a network offers such a sum to avoid a bigger disaster, what amounts are at stake with the leaks that companies like Sony, something we have seen in recent years.
This "bug bounty", after all, seems more for ransom, rather than as a reward.