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HBO Hacker Leaks Message From HBO Offering $250,000 'Bounty Payment' (variety.com)
The HBO hacker has struck yet again. From a report: Variety has obtained a copy of another message released Thursday by the anonymous hacker to select journalists in which HBO is apparently responding to the initial video letter that was sent informing the Time Warner-owned company of the massive data breach. The message from HBO, dated July 27, features the network's offer to make a "bounty payment" of $250,000 as part of a program in which "white hat IT professionals" are rewarded for "bringing these types of things to our attention." While the message takes a curiously non-confrontational tone in response to a hacker out to damage HBO, a source close to the investigation who confirmed the veracity of the email explained it was worded that way to stall for time while the company attempted to assess the serious situation.
>I've been working in IT for over 20 years, and the thing I've seen over and over again is
Let's generalize a bit. You've seen that corporations collect knowledge but not wisdom, so they keep repeating the fundamental mistakes while avoiding repeating the exact circumstances of them.
Outsourcing vs. in-house. Cubical farms vs. offices. Part time vs. full time. Exploiting vs. 'partnering' with employees. It all goes in cycles of about half a career-span, as new people take over and experience is lost.
Unfortunately, you do need to import new knowledge and youthful enthusiasm from time to time, and people do tend to calcify as they age and eventually they go and die on you.
I simply find it very frustrating that I can see these loops and I'm not a genius, I'm simply in my 40s. Which leaves me wondering what kind of idiots are running the show, given that most of the people above me in the org structure are older.
$250k will buy you two mid-level security engineers for a year. (source) That doesn't seem like that would cut it for an organization as large as HBO.
"Everything is running fine, why are we paying IT so much?" "Everything is broken, what are we paying IT for?"
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I don't feel denigrated by being likened to a small child. Small children are at least curious and eager to learn (at least before this gets driven out of them when they get confronted by the school system).
Most adults are lazy fucks that couldn't be bothered to learn something if their life depended on it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.