Although Iger made no mention of the amount, he did say that the hackers were "asking for a large bitcoin payment to keep the movie under wraps." The hackers threatened to release the entire film in five minute snippets if payment was not forthcoming. For his part, Iger vowed that Disney would never pay ransom for any stolen content.
This hacking episode is very similar to the recent leak of Netflix's 'Orange Is The New Black' series. In that case, hackers had breached the security of a Hollywood post-production facility that Netflix uses for its original content. The hackers targeted Netflix with ransom demands which were denied. Subsequently, ten new and unreleased episodes of the series were released on 'Pirate Bay', an on-line bit-torrent site.
Entertainment content hacking and ransom is fast becoming the new means for making lots of money illegally. It appears to be easily accomplished and the culprits can't suffer any consequences given that they are, most likely, offshore in different countries.
How many hacks have there been is unknown. In many cases, unlike Disney and Netflix, the hackers have been paid and the victims never reveal the crime for fear they may not be used for future business.
CMG believes entertainment content hacking and ransom will become more prevalent as there appears to be no way to prevent it. Self-named, 'TheDarkLord', hacker(s) have thus far not extorted any money from Disney or Netflix but the press TheDarkLord is getting could help it in the future especially against smaller firms which would not want their clients to know they have been hacked.
TheDarkLord also targets other industries. For example, just last week they hacked three major healthcare companies and released data on thousands of medical patients.
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