Seriously, if you've ever used your credit card online, anywhere, there is about a 95% chance it has been stolen. That is perhaps being conservative. If you go to the right places, you can buy a bulk of 100 credit card numbers that have been stolen for ~$50. I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was no more than $1.00 per number. And that is because these groups have literally millions. With millions, it doesn't matter how much they're actually worth, you just want to get rid of them. Sometimes they can get a packet sniffer on unsecured lines between transfers and such, or they get into a server. It isn't real hard in most cases. Quite scary.
Usually if they are stolen online then either the workstation or the server are compromised with a virus. as long as the work station is clean you are normally safe. the connection is normally protected with encryption.
As far as buying credit card number, that would be pointless. you would have a difficult time using them. If a person checks their statement and sees an improper charge there are usually enough paper trails to find out who did it.
You are partially correct. It is fairly easy to get physical access to a server through various means and compromise it that way. Also, yes, the connection is usually encypted, however, a lot of times you can find a connection somehwhere along the line which is not. Happened in one case to the Winners branch or something. They lost some millions of numbers from one packet sniffer in a clever location.
@Slapshot: Their user data is something that is very important to protect. If your playtime is linked with your account in the data he has (this is presumably so) then that can be considered a breach of privacy. While I`m sure most don`t really care, it really doesn`t look good if Nintendo didn`t do anything to get it back. Not that they should have either. Blackmail is illegal
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@Chicken.... It was just a guess, but I don't see what else a hacker would be looking for if he claim information on 4000 people. I'm sure how long we played Galaxy 2 doesn't really matter.
Yeah, it's puzzling, I admit! If he got the credit card info, which you're probably right about, then he was probably just blaming "Nintendo" as an entity because it's large and newsworthy. If he got the user information...well...that's still illegal I guess, but not as exciting.
You are partially correct. It is fairly easy to get physical access to a server through various means and compromise it that way. Also, yes, the connection is usually encypted, however, a lot of times you can find a connection somehwhere along the line which is not. Happened in one case to the Winners branch or something. They lost some millions of numbers from one packet sniffer in a clever location.
In the case of Winners the credit card information was stored on a server that was hacked. The transactions were from in-store retail purchases and not from online purchases.
Weird. Recently on Saturday, my Gmail account was on some lock because of 'suspicious' activity and I had to verify my account and so on. Not a huge hassel. But it turns out that someone/something got into my account and emailed everyone on my friend's list a link about "customer service" and was rejected by Google.
Not sure if this has anything to do with this story. My account has NEVER been hacked before and I don't apply and give my email away.
Not sure why he would steal information from consumers. It's kind of puzzling why he would do this. Did he want publicity?
@bboy2970: I'm a former Nintendo fanboy and even I wouldn't wish life sentence on him.
Also, I don't think it automatically means he has something against Nintendo. I'm sure if he did, he would have indicated it more, but as of now, we know nothing of his opinion on the company. For all we know, he could have been a huge Nintendo fanboy who wanted to get more stuff for his Wii so he could play more Virtual Console/WiiWare. That being said, it's not particularly important to this discussion, so I'm not going to go further into it, just wanted to bring up that this doesn't indicate his opinion on Nintendo.
Wait, info on 4000 gamers? What info does Nintendo have?
Credit Card info for WiiWare/VC Downloads I'm sure.
Does Nintendo actually process their own credit card billing, though? It's usually farmed out to another party that specializes in billing and only billing, for precisely this reason. Nintendo should never even see your credit card number, let alone store it.
Yeah, they don't store your credit card number. I don't see what info he could have "leaked" other than username
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I doubt they could have gotten card numbers either. Nintendo or the 3rd party that processes the payments doesn't store card info. However, if he hacked Club Nintendo or something protected with a password, that could be an issue. Most people use the exact same username and password for all accounts, so it's very easy to a bot to hack your email, bank info, etc. once they have a username/password for one account.
Make sure you use some sort of variations with your passwords. It really doesn't matter too much how "secure" they are. Just make each one a little bit different at least, so the bots can't hack you. Even if you only use a little variation (so you can remember easily), there are so many people using the EXACT same info, so they won't take the time to mess with your stuff. The one password that you should really differentiate is your email, because if they get into your email, it's super easy to change all your other passwords.
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Topic: Nintendo hacker arrested
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