California man gets 3 years in prison for hacking Nintendo, collecting child pornography

Prosecutors say Ryan Hernandez ran a forum where he shared Nintendo vulnerabilities.

A 21-year-old California man has been sentenced to three years in prison and seven years of supervised release for a hacking scheme that stole proprietary Nintendo information, and for possessing child pornography.

The defendant, Ryan Hernandez, will also have to pay more than $259,000 to remediate damages he allegedly caused Nintendo, U.S. prosecutors in the Western District of Washington announced Tuesday.

The sentencing comes four years after Hernandez first got in trouble with the law for alleged hacking. In 2016, as a teenager, Hernandez and an unnamed associate stole login credentials from a Nintendo employee that were used to access files on Nintendo consoles and games, according to prosecutors. FBI agents visited Hernandez and his parents, and Hernandez pledged not to engage in anymore malicious online activity, the Justice Department said in a press release.

But Hernandez went on to hack multiple Nintendo servers and steal internal data on popular video games and developer tools from June 2018 through June 2019, according to the Justice Department. He also allegedly boasted about his exploits on social media and ran a chat forum where he shared information about vulnerabilities in Nintendo’s network.

After FBI agents searched Hernandez’s home and electronic devices in June 2019, they found he had collected and stored images and videos of child pornography, according to court records. Hernandez pleaded guilty in January to one count of hacking and one count of child pornography possession.

Christopher Black, an attorney for Hernandez, declined to comment on the sentencing.

Nintendo and other video-game developers have had to deal with a big black market for pirated games, one that is often supported by malicious hacking. The Justice Department in October announced the arrest of two men for allegedly helping run a scheme that sold tools that allowed Nintendo Switch users to play pirated versions of games.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Technology

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

• The Collective Cyber Defense letter wrote your next vendor questionnaire

Threats

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

• Dogged Russia-based botnet dismantled after 23-year run

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure