Nintendo Hacker Sentenced to Three Years Following Guilty Plea

A 21-year-old hacker has been sentenced to three years in prison over federal charges related to hacking and child pornography, acording to a release from the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington.

Ryan Hernandez, who also went by the handle "RyanRocks," plead guilty earlier this year to charges related to a 2016 phishing scheme. According to records filed, Hernandez and an associate used phishing techniques to gain access to and download Nintendo files related to games and consoles, including the yet-to-be-released Nintendo Switch. Hernandez was reportedly contacted by FBI agents and promised to to stop further malicious activity.

Then, from "at least" June 2018 to June 2019 Hernandez conducted more hacking on Nintendo servers to acquire confidential information and boasted about his findings on platforms like Twitter and Discord. An FBI search in June 2019 seized several devices and discovered "thousands" of confidential files, as well as more than 1,000 explicit videos and images of minors stored in a folder.

Under the terms, it's been recommended that Hernandez be incarcerated for three years. He's also agreed to pay $259,323 in restitution to Nintendo for the remediation costs caused by his conduct. He will also be on seven years' supervised release following that sentence, and will be required to register as a sex offender.

In 2018, a World of Warcraft hacker was also sentenced to jail time for orchestrating DDoS attacks against the popular Blizzard MMO, and earlier this year, Ubisoft stated it was investigating the potential leak of Watch Dogs Legion's source code. Nintendo itself has dealt with several significant leaks, and has been fairly punitive to those who have been caught.