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The Hacker Who Found the Secrets of the Next Xbox and PlayStation
An anonymous reader writes "Stephen Totilo at Kotaku has a long article detailing the exploits of an Australian hacker who calls himself SuperDaE. He managed to break into networks at Microsoft, Sony, and Epic Games, from which he retrieved information about the PS4 and next-gen Xbox 'Durango' (which turned out to be correct), and he even secured developer hardware for Durango itself. He uncovered security holes at Epic, but notified the company rather than exploiting them. He claims to have done the same with Microsoft. He hasn't done any damage or facilitated piracy with the access he's had, but simply breaching the security of those companies was enough to get the U.S. FBI to convince Australian authorities to raid his house and confiscate his belongings. In an age where many tech-related 'sources' are just empty claims, a lot of this guy's information has checked out. The article describes both SuperDaE's activities and a journalist's efforts to verify his claims."
He broke the law, if his story is true, plain and simple. You're the one with twisted perspective on it. He had no right to access their networks or proprietary information. I hope they don't go TOO hard on him as he did seem to have relatively benign intentions, but he hacked into systems without permission. The companies in question did not contract him to do penetration testing or an overall security assessment.