Xbox Underground Hackers Charged With Stealing Information Worth $100m

Xbox Underground Hackers Charged With Stealing Information Worth $100m

39
Richard Walker

Hackers calling themselves 'The Xbox Underground' have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer fraud and copyright infringement having stolen $100 million in commercial information and assets relating to Xbox One and Xbox One games.

The Xbox Underground infiltrated the networks of several video games companies including Microsoft, Valve, Epic Games and Zombie Studios, making off with the assets. Zombie had been working on simulation software for the US Army, leading to the group also hacking into the military's network.

A Delaware court saw David Pokora, 22, of Mississauga, Ontario, and Sanadodeh Nesheiwat, 28, of Washington, New Jersey plead guilty to the charges brought against them, while Nathan Leroux, 20, of Bowie, Maryland, and Austin Alcala, 18, of McCordsville, Indiana, as well as an unnamed Australian national have also been charged.

Sentencing is due to take place in January, while investigators say that work on the case is still ongoing. A maximum jail sentence of five years could come with the charges against the group should they be convicted.

[The Wichita Eagle via Polygon]

Comments
39
  • Awesome :-)
  • These so called hackers better start stretching their a-holes, otherwise it will be a bloody mess in prison.
  • They will probably end up with jobs as counter hackers by the end of it lol
  • Just out of curiosity - since when did Microsoft sill have $100 million-dollar ideas lying around?
  • Book 'em, Danno!
  • What a bunch of idiots. Not only did you attempt to steal from the biggest computer conglomerate on the planet...you also bragged about it by calling yourself "Xbox Underground". Did these fools honestly thought they would get away with stealing from both Microsoft and the military?! Yeah...hold the soap as tight as you can. In fact, you better work on your glutes. You're gonna need it!
  • where you cut of the heads of 4 more will rise...All Hail the UNDERGROUND!!!! JK BTW
  • 2 of them pleaded guilty and got 5 years of prison to pleaded innocent @5 sense they used what they had and made a prototype xbox one and sold it on ebay early which can affect a lot of things yeah I say 100 million is about right plus they stole source code on a bunch of unreleased games which if they got done right they could have released them early as well for download
  • @2 What is it with people and fantasy prison rape? Everytime someone gets sentenced, whatever the crime, people always say stuff like soap, showers, what they deserve etc... bit weird.
  • @10 I know any way they are hackers I'm sure they know all about Trojan protection hehe
  • According to BBC's article on this, "Stephen Totilo reported that as well as having tried to help sell copies of the Xbox One kit, the Perth-based man - who used the nickname SuperDae - had also claimed to have played pre-release versions of Sleeping Dogs 2 and Homefront 2. The man is reported to have added that he had searched for Half Life 3 on Valve's servers, but had not managed to find anything." Insult to injury. I'm curious as to how they got the kit in the first place.
  • People getting excited about other being anally raped. What the fuck is wrong with you?
  • @5 Popr attempt at humor or trolling. Happy they were caught.
  • I can genuinely see these guys ended up working for the CIA
  • Good fuck em.
  • @13 Excited? Getting raped in prison by a man is a sort of joke, and these hackers deserve anything but respect. Joking about rape in this context isn't getting excited about it. Sure it may not be very noble, but it definitely isn't saying that you support rape. There's nothing wrong about it, unless someone like you who takes a harmless pun, and turns it into something bigger than it is.
  • @ #10 and #13 I'll never understand this. Women constantly tell people how rape ruins lives, but people still find prison rape of men hilarious for some reason, and constantly joke about it. What they did was wrong, but they deserve to be raped? sure is edgy teenager @ #17 Try telling a rape gag to a woman or an actual victim of rape, I'm sure they will find it a "harmless pun"
  • Inmates very rarely get raped. It is just a stereotype made up by tv and movies. It's not like these people are going to share a prison block with murderers and rapists (the latter of which are more likely to get hurt in a prison becauseof how inmates view it.) Plus jail time is still being debating. It says a maximum of five years but that doesn't mean that they'll have to serve five years.
  • Were they banned on XBOX Live? ;-)
  • They will go to a low security prison for white collar crimes, so it will be a country club experience.
  • @18 This isn't talking about the raping of a women. The other comments weren't talking about women. +1 Points for taking it out of context once again. A couple of dudes make some soap jokes on a forum and you lecture them about the morals of humanity. It's just a HARMLESS post on a forum. If you take offense to a dropping the soap joke or someone saying that they should work out their gluts, then you have the issues. Learn when people are just messing around and when they're serious. Rape is ok! Rape is funny! See that is terrible to say and it is not funny. That is when you get angry and lecture me through a reply, not when someone says to not drop the soap.
  • Wow prison rape jokes, soooo original and funny.
  • @#22 It doesn't matter if people were talking about women or not. Rape is equally as horrific regardless of the sex of the victim. Talking about it "being out of context" is also laughable, as what did rape even have to do with the story in the first place apart from a few edgy kids getting the same old tired gags in yet again? If someone you know and care about ever gets raped, I'll be sure to "lecture" you about it and make "dropping the soap" gags, I'm sure you will enjoy it if "it's only banter"
  • I have to agree, rape is never acceptable. However, studies have shown 9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape.
  • OMG will some of you just stop already with the lectures. I have faith in this community to know that any wrong doing of rape is unacceptable and they feel the same. However, I'm not totally against rape. I believe that rape should be done to the person(s) that committed the crime. That's another subject for another day and time though. Most of the jokes here involve men in showers. Jokes! That's it. Regardless of what context you take it in is entirely upon the person. Still, no one should be lecturing anyone! Just say you're offended by it and ask that no one mentions rape in a joke again. You're better off doing it that way versus coming off a high horse and white-knighting behind the ideal of what rape is. If you're offended...say so!
  • Theyre not going to be locked up with other violent offenders. Some of you guys have no clue how the penal system works. Jail and prison are wildly different. Sure, the maximum sentence is 5 years but here in america jails and prisons are so overcrowded that you only serve %10-%15 of the time sentenced. Especially for nonviolent crimes. These guys will do a few months time in a chill minimum security prison with no chance of buttrape. Being buttraped in prison only happens to other sexual assailants and is committed as sending a message. If the thought of someone being buttraped is amusing to you, then you have a pretty sick sense of justice/humor
  • @27 rape in prison isn't about sending a message... most sex in prison is consensual because it's just a bunch of dudes that want to get their rocks off.
  • @28 thanks for being an example of my point
  • @29 I pretty much said what you did earlier in this thread. Yeah there's gangs and all this shit but if you think rape in prison is anything more than a dude wanting to bust a nut I call bullshit
  • I agree. Contrary to popular belief, homosexuality is a learned behavior. When men are deprived of sex in prison, they change there sexuality to gay. Jaws is correct.
  • @30 Typo...? You completely contradicted yourself
  • @31 you are so misinformed...stop having opinions
  • @Jaws As Crowns Obviously you do not know anyone that has spent any real time in prison. I know a black guy that has spent over a decade in prison and he said it is hard to get sleep because almost every night you can hear screams of pain and people begging not to get raped. He has been to almost every prison in my state and apparently the ones that are just big open rooms with several hundred bunks with all the inmates together are the worst but rape happens in all the prisons. He would not lie to me I have known this guy most of my life and he is was a preacher that made the mistake of being black in Arkansas. This is not just Arkansas prisons either I spent 11 days in jail in Arizona on marijuana charges and I met several people that have spent a lot of their life in prison in Arizona and California. The stories they told were so awful I won't even write them here but they complained of the exact same things my friend did like lack of sleep do to people getting gang raped by groups of thug gang members and begging them not to. Clearly the idiots on here that think that is funny for these guys have absolutely no clue what prison is like. I don't feel sorry for rapists and cold blood killers getting raped but that is not the case for these guys.
  • Stop talking about rape you sick bastards this is a gaming website
  • What's with the Rapey stuff? I guess Freud was right after all? Let's look at this intelligently without focusing on the anus for a moment. These Hackers will probably be sentenced to prison time, but they'll make plea deals and whether that works in their favor or not, then there's good behavior and anything else that could shorten a sentance, they'll still have a chance after prison to be computer security consultancy positions, there are a good number of hackers who turn over and work for these kinds of firms after prison (because there's always a 20/20 or Nightline story about how hard it is for a ex-con to get job etc. and they return to crime)but for Hackers there's a better chance of opportunity because they have a unique skill set of breaking through security that was created by a large team of people working for a company or government, and they're just an individual or a small group.
  • if these kids deserve prison..then so do the crooks at microsoft for abusing the system. and throw cliffy "DRM" b in there with them. 50 dollars for weapon skins for gears 3..now that is abuse. the DRM crap they tried to pull is not defendable.
  • wow 5 years for stealing 100 million in assets and info ill do 5 for 100 million
  • Wait.....Don't any of you remember Microsoft has ALWAYS stated, "Our networks are secure. We have NEVER been hacked.". Another lie by good ol' MS & another flip-flop.
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