On Friday, the defendant in an ongoing case involving hacking into and leaking details from Nintendo's servers plead guilty to his charges. 21-year old Ryan Hernandez, otherwise known as RyanRocks, was brought up on charges of illegally obtaining information from Nintendo's servers, and for possession of child pornography. Originally, Hernandez's first offense was back in 2016--when he was still a minor at the time--where he managed to use a phishing technique in order to get ahold of a Nintendo employee's credentials to download pre-release promotional information about the Nintendo Switch, and then distribute it to the public.

His actions were reported to the FBI, who then visited Hernandez in the following year, informing him that he needed to stop the malicious and illegal behavior. Hernandez promised that he wouldn't continue to do such things, but the warnings were quickly disregarded, as in 2018, he hacked directly into Nintendo servers, once again obtaining information that he broadcast to others across the internet, even bragging publically about his exploits. In the middle of 2019, the FBI once again visited Hernandez, seizing technology involved in the hack, along with hard drives and "circumvention devices used to access pirated video games and software". It was there that not only did the FBI find the ill-gotten Nintendo files, but also hundreds of child pornography-related media.

Nevertheless, from at least June 2018 to June 2019, HERNANDEZ returned to his malicious activities, hacking into multiple Nintendo servers and stealing confidential information about various popular video games, gaming consoles, and developer tools. HERNANDEZ boasted about his hacking exploits on several online and social media platforms, such as Twitter and Discord, and leaked some of the stolen information to others. HERNANDEZ further operated an online chat forum called “Ryan’s Underground Hangout” in which he and others discussed Nintendo products and shared information about possible Nintendo network vulnerabilities, and on which he shared some of the confidential information he had stolen.

The maximum sentence for illegally hacking is only 5 years in prison, while possession of child pornography is a far greater issue, and has a maximum prison time of 20 years. Due to Hernandez's guilty plea, the lawyers involved with the case have recommended a sentence of 3 years, though this could be altered by the judge at the time of sentencing, which will take place on April 21, 2020. Additional stipulations to the case also include Hernandez agreeing to pay $259,323 in damages to Nintendo, and being forced to register as a sex offender, once he is free from prison.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, prosecutors and defense attorneys, will recommend three years in prison. However, the ultimate sentence is up to the judge and could be up to the statutory maximums of 5 years in prison for computer fraud and abuse, and 20 years in prison for possession of child pornography.

HERNANDEZ has agreed to pay $259,323 in restitution to Nintendo for the remediation costs caused by his conduct. Under the terms of the plea agreement, HERNANDEZ also will be required to register as a sex offender following his conviction.

The case was investigated by the FBI, Seattle Cyber Task Force. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Steven Masada.

Source

 

[PrincessLillie]

He's probably going to tell them all about gbagemp

Okay, but what the hell is gbagemp?

 

[comput3rus3r]

yeah cuz i am sure the FBI and Nintendo are totally above planting some CP on you make sure they ruin your life

seems a little too convenient for Nintendo that the two major hackers just happened to have CP. Remember The Cruel, developer of Freeshop?

 

[Mark McDonut]

Oh wow, I remember that dude boasting way too much around here with leaked 3ds and DSi stuff. Never expected him to get himself into this much trouble though. I guess some people will do anything for attention.

 

[DSoryu]

A piece of shit that fully deserves what he got. I knew that someday this would happen. Also, is very interesting how the pedo pattern repeats with these kind of people...

 

[Scarlet]

yeah cuz i am sure the FBI and Nintendo are totally above planting some CP on you make sure they ruin your life

is this memes

because it sure sounds like memes

 

[Deleted User]

Wouldn't surprise me if the CP was his highschool girlfriend whom he promised to delete.

 

[Viri]

Since he seems good enough to get in to Nintendo's servers I wonder if the porn was to blackmail people, dunno if that's be any better in his sentencing or not though.

He phished them. Imagine being in his shoes. You phished a Nintendo employee and steal their company secrets! You're unlucky enough for the FBI to find out, but the FBI are nice, and leave you off with a warning. "Stop hacking Nintendo pls, and we'll leave you alone!" What do you do in a response? You hack Nintendo even more, and download a shit ton of CP!

I'm surprised he got off with a warning, lol. He may get off easy for the Nintendo stuff, but oh boy, he's fucked when it comes to the CP. That shit will ruin your life, and rightfully so.

 

[Deleted User]

A piece of shit that fully deserves what he got. I knew that someday this would happen. Also, is very interesting how the pedo pattern repeats with these kind of people...

They have a thing for unauthorized access.

 

[weatMod]

is this memes

because it sure sounds like memes

i love the "social engineering" meme when it comes to "hackers"

just admit someone found some naive idiot with piss poor OPsec working for your company
and that this is 100% YOUR FAULT

 

[wolf-snake]

"illegally obtaining information from Nintendo's servers, and for possession of child pornography."


Well that escalated quickly.

 

[chrisrlink]

leaking shit? i'd rather him take down N's entire network for all the bullshit they've done protecting their ip

 

[ZachyCatGames]

He never released exploits publicly, but privately he shared what he stole from other developers some of whom had submitted the details to bug bounty program, which he also hacked into to get info on what was being submitted.

And via his discord server and his friends he shared all the Nintendo sdk's from the devnet and advanced beta firmwares, he phished one of the top Nintendo employee and used his login ids to make himself his own account on devnet to get download access to the sdk's and even ordered himself few devkit machines (that is the money part) as all the charges for the kits were placed onto nintendo's corp. accounts.

luckly most people cut ties with him a while ago, as most likely he been working as 'rat' for feds for a while, as he got scooped up long time ago, only now they tieing up loose ends as he most likely no longer useful to them to keep around feeding them info.

"advanced beta firmwares"?
wdym by that? The early versions of major updates that devs get (ex. `NintendoSDK Firmware for NX 6.0.0-1.0`)? or something else (like the internal git repo)?

 

[JuanMena]

Why does all of these guys has CP?

Makes me wonder... no really!
Makes me wonder if the CP that was found on The_Cruel and RyanRocks... wasn't put there.

Otherwise... eww they deserve it.

 

[the_randomizer]

People who engage in that filth (not the hacking, but the other shit), and produce that, can both rot in prison for all I care.

 

[DJPlace]

the hacking i get but the CHILD PORN for a 21 year old... what a fucking pervert.

 

[piratesephiroth]

Since he seems good enough to get in to Nintendo's servers I wonder if the porn was to blackmail people, dunno if that's be any better in his sentencing or not though.

Nah, he didn't hack anything. I'm pretty sure he just used a script to brute force it and harvest all available files in the download server, because they're named numerically.
After the leaks Nintendo locked down the files better.

 

[zoogie]

Knowing Ryan, he'll probably go right back to what he was doing in 3 - 20 years, or whenever they turn him loose again.

 

[ZachyCatGames]

Knowing Ryan, he'll probably go right back to what he was doing in 3 - 20 years, or whenever they turn him loose again.

Then get arrested for another 20 years a week later

 

[MohammedQ8]

I wonder how would Nintendo prison look like?

 

[Pipistrele]

yeah cuz i am sure the FBI and Nintendo are totally above planting some CP on you to make sure they ruin your life

What do they stand to gain from this though? Besides, restitution payment is already big enough to ruin his life, seems arbitrary to just add CP charge on top of it "for the kicks".