Ryan Rocks aka Ryan West pleads guilty to hacking into Nintendo Servers

[garyopa]

A California man has pled guilty to hacking Nintendo’s servers to steal confidential files, including taking information about the Nintendo Switch months before it was announced, the US Department of Justice revealed recently.

Rumors have been floating around on the Underground Dark Web since the middle of last year, when @RyanRocks suddenly dropped off the 'net and there was photos of him being stopped by Nintendo staff and possible FBI agents at E3 2019, and now finally the truth is out, as the US DOJ have unsealed 'court records' and published a Press Release detailing the fact that he repeatedly hacked Nintendo’s servers and released confidential corporate information even tho he was told before by the FBI when he was minor back in 2016 to stop!

A 21-year-old Palmdale, California, man pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to federal crimes related to his computer hacking scheme and his possession of child pornography found on his digital devices, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran. RYAN S. HERNANDEZ, aka Ryan West, who used the online moniker “RyanRocks,” pleaded guilty to a two-count information. HERNANDEZ is scheduled for sentencing by U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour on April 21, 2020.

According to records filed in the case, in 2016, while still a minor, HERNANDEZ and an associate used a phishing technique to steal credentials of a Nintendo employee, which were exploited to gain access to and download confidential Nintendo files related to its consoles and games. That stolen information, including pre-release information about the anticipated Nintendo Switch console, was leaked to the public. In October 2017, following an investigation into the hack, FBI agents contacted HERNANDEZ and his parents at their California residence. HERNANDEZ promised to stop any further malicious activity and confirmed that he understood the consequences of any future hacking.

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.

Attached below is the unsealed court indictment from December, and those in the warez scene, knew already as he was most famous for spreading around the illegal Nintendo SDK's for 3DS, Wii U and more recently with the Nintendo Switch console, some of which even had 'rat' trackers buried inside them!

Source: MaxConsole

 

[Flame]

oh boy....