Hacker Releases 1.7TB Treasure Trove of Gaming Info

mvar writes "According to Kotaku, a hacker named SuperDaeE who breached multiple gaming companies (Valve, Sony, MS to name a few) has released a 1.7TB treasure trove file for download. The file which contains source code for older titles plus development kits for the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, is encrypted and SuperDaeE claims that it is his insurance in case he gets arrested."

Insurance Policy?

[Orestesx]

Right...cause if he gets in trouble, blackmail will surely get him out of it.

Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Now hackers everywhere have a reason to get SuperDaeE arrested.

FTP?

[Anonymous Coward]

> using centralized resource to distribute "insurance"
>> 2013

Too large to be useful...

[Darkness404]

This sounds like too large of an "insurance" to be useful. Most people don't have the bandwidth or the space to hold 1.7 TB of encrypted info. Smaller files might make sense but not huge ones like this.

Encrypted blob

[SirGarlon]

I totally believe it's possible to exfiltrate data from multiple game companies (or indeed any companies). But how do we know he didn't just upload a 1.7 TB encrypted blob of random garbage? The word of a 17-year-old script kiddie is not exactly a lot to go on.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[VorpalRodent]

And even if they did...what's the value? Please explain to me if I'm missing something, but if I can't decrypt it, then my having a copy is just to protect his "insurance policy", in which case I'm aiding and abetting. I assume additional risk with zero potential benefit, except perhaps helping "stick it to the corporate blah blah blah"?

Re:Encrypted blob

[CastrTroy]

And it seems odd that there would be so much data. Source code doesn't take that much space, and neither do development kits. Perhaps he's including game assets like textures and cut scenes from the games, but I don't really see much point in including that, since it would mostly be easy to extract from the actual game files themselves.

lol wat

[Anonymous Coward]

Insurance in what sense?

1. Get arrested;
2. Release password to unencrypt source code for old software;
3. Get charged with yet another crime;
4. ???

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

Re:Do it like Snowden

[PRMan]

"China: Bastion of civil rights." Has kind of a funny ring to it...

Re:Insurance Policy?

[spiffmastercow]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

My guess is it's 1.7GB of /dev/random anyway.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[nedlohs]

Because yelling a passphrase is easier than yelling out 1.7TB of data on the spot?

Re:So not only a hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a minor himself. The "child pornography" could be pictures of his own dick for all we know, or a 17 year old girlfriend. The "drug" charges are "posession of cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia" so who gives a shit and the "weapons" charge was supposedly a stun gun. Not a taser, just one of those sparky things.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[DrXym]

Safe how? It sounds like he is being charged for possession of kiddy porn among other things. He'll be tried and convicted regardless of his "threat" (which in itself is a offence) and if he's fucking stupid enough to release the key he can expect to receive fresh charges on top since he has just incriminated himself. So he'll probably go from 3-5 years up to 10+ years. Doubtless all sentencing to be served consecutively. Great plan that.

Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[TiggertheMad]

More to the point, unless the 1.7TB contains something of interest in the first place (ex: stolen source code that isn't encrypted), who is going to bother to download it? See, you have to give people an incentive to download that much shit before they are going to act as your own personal distributed storage service.

Bet when he gets arrested (not if), that there aren't any copies of his 'get out of jail card' in the wild.

Also, just for the record, have there ever been instances of anyone successfully blackmailing the cops into letting them go? Ever?