So, I don’t know if you know this, but yesterday, news hit that some hackers got into trouble for infiltrating Activision, Epic Games, Valve, and Microsoft. They pled guilty, and as it turns out, just hacking and infiltrating isn’t all that they did- they also sold counterfeit Xbox One units.
Their crimes don’t even stop there- they stole a beta build of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and the counterfeit Xbox One units that they were selling went for as much as $20,100. All told, their crimes are estimated to have done at least $100 million in intellectual property and rights damages.
It looks like they will be in deep trouble for what they did too.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said, “the American economy is driven by innovation. But American innovation is only valuable when it can be protected. Today’s guilty pleas show that we will protect America’s intellectual property from hackers, whether they hack from here or from abroad.
“As the indictment charges, the members of this international hacking ring stole trade secret data used in high-tech American products, ranging from software that trains U.S. soldiers to fly Apache helicopters to Xbox games that entertain millions around the world.”
Damn, though.
