Cyber Criminals Breach the HBO Empire
Recently, hackers leaked HBO television scripts and corporate emails. Although, they claim to have breached over a terabyte of data, they have only leaked 800 megabytes of it. The cyber criminal(s) going by Kind Mr. Smith, stated it took about six months to breach the network. Therefore, they are referring to their ransom demand of $6 million as a six-month salary.
It is unclear if the network intends to pay the ransom, after roughly half of the data has already been leaked. HBO officials reported to The Washington Post,
“the review to date has not given us a reason to believe that our email system as a whole has been compromised.” But the network did say it “believed that further leaks might emerge from this cyber incident when we confirmed it last week.”
This breach is evidence no one is off limits.
Could it have been stopped?
Someone recently asked us — If PC Matic is so great, why aren’t large companies using it, such as HBO? Our response — Great question!
Had HBO been using PC Matic Pro, it is possible the breach may not have taken place to begin with. Understandably, this is a bold statement. It is unclear how the cyber criminals wormed their way into the system. It could have been an unpatched program, a fraudulent attachment, or even a malicious URL. Once they wormed their way in, they were able to infiltrate various pieces of data. If the hackers breached the systems due to an unpatched program, PC Matic Pro would have stopped it because the software includes patch management. If a malicious, unknown executable caused this breach – PC Matic Pro would have stopped it because it uses application whitelisting technology. Whitelisting blocks all unknown programs/files from executing until proven safe. Therefore, regardless of how many malicious attachments, programs or files the hackers attempt to use, they will always be stopped with this technology.
Could this breach have been stopped? It’s quite possible.
