Nintendo Conducted Invasive Surveillance Operation Against Homebrew Hacker (torrentfreak.com) 23
Leaked Nintendo documents have revealed a frightening surveillance operation carried out against a hacker who was researching exploits for the 3DS handheld. TorrentFreak reports: During the past 24 hours, various Twitter accounts (1,2) have been posting snippets from documents that were recently leaked from Nintendo. While there are numerous items of interest, the most shocking revelations involve Neimod, a hacker who several years ago developed exploits for the 3DS handheld console. [T]he scale of the operation, which is revealed in detail in the leaked documents, shows just how far the gaming giant was prepared to go to stop his work. For example, the leak reveals personal profiling that dug deeply into Neimod's education status, listed details of his working life, while offering evidence of physical snooping on his daily lifestyle. What time he could be found at home, who came to see him there, and even when he visited places like banks and restaurants are all included. While this kind of surveillance is creepy in its own right, additional documents reveal a detailed plan to use the gathered intelligence to physically confront Neimod in order to pressurize him into complying with the company's demands.
According to Nintendo's planning, the operation would begin around April 15, 2013, with its team meeting at a local hotel to discuss and finalize their plans. Following a review of Neimod's movements of the previous week, the team would then decide where and when contact would be made -- after work or at home, for example. With an undercover investigator monitoring Neimod to discover what time he left work, Neimod was to be approached by a 'contact team,' who were instructed to approach their target "in a friendly, non-threatening, professional, and courteous manner." "Provide a business card," the instructions read. After Neimod had been engaged in conversation, the team was instructed to flatter the hacker by "acknowledging his engineering/programming aptitude." They were also told to reference his stated aim of not "facilitating piracy" with his hacks but point out Nintendo's concerns that a release of his hack could do just that.
Whether Neimod complied or resisted, Nintendo prepared for both eventualities. The following slide, posted to Twitter by Eclipse-TT, shows a flow chart that begins with instructions for the "Knock and Talk Team," details a staging area, rules of engagement, and plans for what should happen when things go to plan -- or otherwise. The Nintendo "Final Enforcement Proposal" document describes a "carrot and stick" approach, with the stick being a laundry list of potential offenses committed by Neimod under Belgian law and the carrot representing a number of sweeteners that might be of interest to the hacker. If cooperation was achieved, Nintendo suggested it could refrain from filing a criminal complaint. It may also enter into a "bounty" contract with Neimod with payments made for finding and documenting exploits. Within certain parameters, his discoveries could still be announced to the public, allowing him to retain "bragging rights." This could help Nintendo's image, the company wrote.
According to Nintendo's planning, the operation would begin around April 15, 2013, with its team meeting at a local hotel to discuss and finalize their plans. Following a review of Neimod's movements of the previous week, the team would then decide where and when contact would be made -- after work or at home, for example. With an undercover investigator monitoring Neimod to discover what time he left work, Neimod was to be approached by a 'contact team,' who were instructed to approach their target "in a friendly, non-threatening, professional, and courteous manner." "Provide a business card," the instructions read. After Neimod had been engaged in conversation, the team was instructed to flatter the hacker by "acknowledging his engineering/programming aptitude." They were also told to reference his stated aim of not "facilitating piracy" with his hacks but point out Nintendo's concerns that a release of his hack could do just that.
Whether Neimod complied or resisted, Nintendo prepared for both eventualities. The following slide, posted to Twitter by Eclipse-TT, shows a flow chart that begins with instructions for the "Knock and Talk Team," details a staging area, rules of engagement, and plans for what should happen when things go to plan -- or otherwise. The Nintendo "Final Enforcement Proposal" document describes a "carrot and stick" approach, with the stick being a laundry list of potential offenses committed by Neimod under Belgian law and the carrot representing a number of sweeteners that might be of interest to the hacker. If cooperation was achieved, Nintendo suggested it could refrain from filing a criminal complaint. It may also enter into a "bounty" contract with Neimod with payments made for finding and documenting exploits. Within certain parameters, his discoveries could still be announced to the public, allowing him to retain "bragging rights." This could help Nintendo's image, the company wrote.
Previous Slashdot post (Score:5, Insightful)
https://games.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Gotta love them dupes.
To search Slashdot for dupes before posting (Score:2)
Slashdot admins: here's a one liner to search for potential dupes before posting.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
The timespan is defined by the 'tbr' parameter. As used above ("tbs=qdr:y"), it searches over the past year.
It's documented here:
https://support.google.com/web... [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I would love to punish you. I'll shove a bamboo shoot under a fingernail for each one of your spam posts.
That thought is actually starting to get me turned on. How strange.
Final punishment (Score:2)
OMFG (Score:2, Troll)
who were instructed to approach their target "in a friendly, non-threatening, professional, and courteous manner." "Provide a business card,"
That's HORRIFYING! How DARE they approach him in a polite fashion??? Do the Japanese know no shame? Being professional??? Quickly, get the pitchforks!!!
Re: (Score:1)
who were instructed to approach their target "in a friendly, non-threatening, professional, and courteous manner." "Provide a business card,"
That's HORRIFYING! How DARE they approach him in a polite fashion??? Do the Japanese know no shame? Being professional??? Quickly, get the pitchforks!!!
This is typical Japanese business behavior.
Not unlike the mafia, in this case, the threat is implicit not explicit and the consequences are implied, not spoken.
Anyone who does not understand the 3-dimensional chess being played in this type of conversation is going to find themselves in unfortunate circumstances very quickly.
Just as suspected (Score:4, Insightful)
[T]he scale of the operation, which is revealed in detail in the leaked documents, shows just how far the gaming giant was prepared to go to stop his work. For example, the leak reveals personal profiling that dug deeply into Neimod's education status, listed details of his working life, while offering evidence of physical snooping on his daily lifestyle. What time he could be found at home, who came to see him there, and even when he visited places like banks and restaurants are all included. While this kind of surveillance is creepy in its own right, additional documents reveal a detailed plan to use the gathered intelligence to physically confront Neimod in order to pressurize him into complying with the company's demands.
This is the negative proof of the theory that you are plausibly safe from the colllection of your researchable personal data. Should you attract the interest of folks with inspired, nefarious intent, and you have riled the proper powers that be; you've nothing to hide is but a comfortable illusion.
Along an extended enough timeline, each of us is likely to offend the sensibilities of one of our betters.
Re: Just as suspected (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
How reciprocal is this? Whose business card did they provide? Does the business card have the home address of the person on it? How would that person react if the person they had approached did the same thing back to them outside their home with a group of people? In a parking lot at night, etc.? Would they say that as threatening? What if they decided to go over their head and go straight to a C-level employee at Nintendo in the same manner?
Just no. The person in this article presumably has a mailbox and
The dupe-o-magic is at it again (Score:1)
If only BeauHD conducted ... (Score:2)
some surveillance against Slashdot before double posting Msmash's story.
Seriously it's 2020. It's clear the editors don't care. Can't this be automated in some way? I mean if you type Nintendo right now in the search you literally have to read only 19 words to find out this is a repost. Outsource this crap to Watson, or Elon Musk or hell even a shitty perl script should have a better hit rate than the number of double posts hitting Slashdot.
Good to know this is a crime in the EU. (Score:2, Informative)
Yep, even if somebody accidentially agreed to T&C that included that.
Ah, lookie this (Score:2)
"gathered intelligence to physically confront Neimod in order to pressurize him into complying with the company's demands. "
"Say that's a real nice house you've got there. Beautiful wife, smart kids, a nice dog...what's it's name, oh yeah, says Fido right here. It would be a real shame if something bad were to happen to all of them."
Love (Score:2)
I do love Nintendo IP =)
Re: (Score:1)
And I used to love Nintendo software and hardware so much - the N64 could do so much with such simple hardware - and the GameCube had a superb GPU for its time. Just so sad to see their intent to prosecute homebrew hackers.
In the past consoles used to have amazing graphics capabilities that were unmatched on any other platform, which made them a very attractive platform for homebrew but that's not the case anymore.
The Switch is really nothing special when it comes to hardware, it's just an off the shelf NV
Re: (Score:1)
Good news is that NVidia itself has a Shield Table under development, so a potential competitor to the Switch, which should be easily moddable without any nasty legal repercussions :-). I guess it would be Tegra X2 based, so yes it should have better performance...
https://www.theverge.com/circu... [theverge.com]
Ah (Score:1)
Just hire him, idiots. (Score:2)
They clearly were willing to offer him a very nice consultancy job. Instead of all the cloak and dagger, just approach him openly and offer the job.
Idiots.
In Canada (Score:1)
In Canada such behaviour is called "Belial and Beset" and is a Criminal Offense punishable by many years in the pokey.