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21-year-old California resident Ryan Hernandez, also known as RyanRocks, pleaded guilty to hacking Nintendo servers and stealing thousands of files with confidential and proprietary data. The attack lasted from October 2016 to June 2019.
While still minors, Hernandez and his friend managed to find out the credentials of an unnamed Nintendo employee using a phishing attack: a malicious link was posted on the company's official forum, asking for help allegedly because of a technical problem. As a result, the technical support officer was infected with malware. This allowed attackers who obtained other people's credentials to download a huge amount of data from the company's servers. Among the stolen information was data on equipment, games (including those not yet released), closed tools for developers, company plans, and much more.
Hernandez subsequently released many of this data through social networks, Discord, and so on. As a result, RyanRocks gained some fame in the Nintendo hack community, especially after it posted on the network the supposedly Nintendo Software Development Kit with RAT malware inside.
Interestingly, in the fall of 2017, law enforcement officers came to the still minor Ernades. FBI agents contacted him and, given his age, simply warned that he was breaking the law. Then the hacker vowed to law enforcement authorities to stop attacks on Nintendo systems, but in 2018-2019 he again hacked several Nintendo servers using vulnerabilities and continued to merge the stolen into the network, which ultimately led to the FBI raid in June 2019 and its detention.
During the search, hard drives and devices with thousands of Nintendo proprietary files were seized from Ernades. Worse, according to investigators, the seized hard drives in the BAD STUFF folder also contained more than a thousand videos and images of a sexual nature involving minors.
Hernandez is currently at large, but he is forbidden to travel outside the Western District of Washington and the Central District of California. As part of the plea agreement, he agreed to pay Nintendo nearly $ 260,000 in reimbursement for his conduct. Hernandez faces up to 5 years in prison for computer crimes, and another 20 years in prison for possession of child pornography. The sentencing is scheduled for April 2020.
While still minors, Hernandez and his friend managed to find out the credentials of an unnamed Nintendo employee using a phishing attack: a malicious link was posted on the company's official forum, asking for help allegedly because of a technical problem. As a result, the technical support officer was infected with malware. This allowed attackers who obtained other people's credentials to download a huge amount of data from the company's servers. Among the stolen information was data on equipment, games (including those not yet released), closed tools for developers, company plans, and much more.
Hernandez subsequently released many of this data through social networks, Discord, and so on. As a result, RyanRocks gained some fame in the Nintendo hack community, especially after it posted on the network the supposedly Nintendo Software Development Kit with RAT malware inside.
Interestingly, in the fall of 2017, law enforcement officers came to the still minor Ernades. FBI agents contacted him and, given his age, simply warned that he was breaking the law. Then the hacker vowed to law enforcement authorities to stop attacks on Nintendo systems, but in 2018-2019 he again hacked several Nintendo servers using vulnerabilities and continued to merge the stolen into the network, which ultimately led to the FBI raid in June 2019 and its detention.
During the search, hard drives and devices with thousands of Nintendo proprietary files were seized from Ernades. Worse, according to investigators, the seized hard drives in the BAD STUFF folder also contained more than a thousand videos and images of a sexual nature involving minors.
Hernandez is currently at large, but he is forbidden to travel outside the Western District of Washington and the Central District of California. As part of the plea agreement, he agreed to pay Nintendo nearly $ 260,000 in reimbursement for his conduct. Hernandez faces up to 5 years in prison for computer crimes, and another 20 years in prison for possession of child pornography. The sentencing is scheduled for April 2020.