The Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation 214
An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Totilo at Kotaku has a long article detailing the exploits of an Australian hacker who calls himself SuperDaE. He managed to break into networks at Microsoft, Sony, and Epic Games, from which he retrieved information about the PS4 and next-gen Xbox 'Durango' (which turned out to be correct), and he even secured developer hardware for Durango itself. He uncovered security holes at Epic, but notified the company rather than exploiting them. He claims to have done the same with Microsoft. He hasn't done any damage or facilitated piracy with the access he's had, but simply breaching the security of those companies was enough to get the U.S. FBI to convince Australian authorities to raid his house and confiscate his belongings. In an age where many tech-related 'sources' are just empty claims, a lot of this guy's information has checked out. The article describes both SuperDaE's activities and a journalist's efforts to verify his claims."
No damage? (Score:1, Informative)
There seems to be this common misconception that a network can be broken into without causing any damage. Tell that to the IT department that has to re-flash and re-image every damn machine on the network to make sure no backdoors were left behind.
Re:No damage? (Score:2, Informative)
Having been through such a situation in the past - while the GP contained some hyperbole, I can tell you our guys spent a couple days checking and cleaning up after an intrusion. If you don't think there's a (necessary) significant investment of time that goes into dealing with an intrusion, you've likely never actually worked in IT.