Prolific Nintendo leaker sent to prison for hacking and child pornography possession
Ryan Hernandez was caught with child pornography and thousands of Nintendo documents
The headline of this article was updated at 21:35 GMT.
A 21-year-old who was caught with thousands of confidential Nintendo documents and child pornography has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Ryan Hernandez, who went by the alias ‘RyanRocks’, pleaded guilty to federal crimes related to computer hacking and possession of child pornography earlier this year.
According to a press release published by the US Department of Justice, Hernandez was first caught and warned in 2016, after he’d used a phishing technique to steal the credentials of a Nintendo employee to gain access and download confidential Nintendo files.
Notably, Hernandez leaked information on the Nintendo Switch before its announcement in 2017.
Despite the warning, Hernandez is said to have continued hacking Nintendo servers in 2018 and 2019, stealing information on unreleased games and consoles, which the DOJ says he shared on social media platforms such as Twitter and Discord.
In June 2019, FBI agents searched Hernandez’s home and discovered thousands of confidential Nintendo files. Forensic analysis of his devices also revealed that he’d collected more than one thousand videos and images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
In addition to his three years in prison, Hernandex has agreed to pay $259,323 in restitution to Nintendo. He will also be put on seven years of supervised release following prison and required to register as a sex offender.
Nintendo has been subject to a significant number of data leaks over the past two years, including debug roms for various SNES and N64 games, alongside source code, internal console emulators and more.
In July, a significant amount of classic Nintendo data leaked onto the internet, including early prototypes for games such as Yoshi’s Island, Star Fox, Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The leaks also reportedly contain internal documentation related to GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 64 (and its 64DD add-on), Wii and the China-only iQue, showing how the systems work and the development processes behind them.
The leaked content is said to originate from a server hack related to BroadOn, a company Nintendo had contracted to develop Wii hardware and software.
