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How Hackers Accidentally Sold a Pre-Release XBox One To the FBI

Posted by timothy on from the we-call-this-the-low-priority-unit dept.

SpacemanukBEJY.53u (3309653) writes Earlier this week, an indictment was unsealed outlining a long list of charges against a group of men that stole intellectual property from gaming companies such as Epic Games, Valve, Activision and Microsoft. An Australian member of the group, Dylan Wheeler, describes how it was betrayed by an informant working for the FBI, which bought a hardware mockup of an Xbox One that the group built using source code stolen from Microsoft's Game Developer Network Portal. The device, which the FBI paid $5,000 for, was supposed to be sent to the Seychelles, but never arrived, which indicated the hacking collective had a mole.

67 comments

  1. If the hacking group were Apple by Chrisq · · Score: 0

    They would sue Microsoft pointing to their hardware mockup as prior art!

    1. Re:If the hacking group were Apple by davester666 · · Score: 1

      IP theft is the new murder.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. Yay! by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 4, Funny

    Must mean they've already caught all the murderers, rapists, serial killers, and other dangerous criminals, now they have to turn to this.

    1. Re:Yay! by tibit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cost of the human life is quite small compared to the value of the IP being disclosed here. Sad but true...

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    2. Re:Yay! by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And here I learn that laws can only be enforced when all more severe crimes have been fully handled.

      "Sorry, we can't pursue this murder of your child, Mr. Smith, the genocide in Darfur isn't resolved yet."

    3. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, depending on how fucked up your worldview is. I choose not to play that game.

    4. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really ought to come up with a better example. Perhaps rape would be less extreme than murder, but those are both still violent... murder is murder no matter the quantity of lives destroyed.

    5. Re:Yay! by gtall · · Score: 1

      Really? So, say the slaughter on an industrial scale of the Nazies, or Stalin, or Mao is somehow similar to the single murder? Even Stalin was bright enough to observe that quantity has a quality all its own.

    6. Re:Yay! by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So someone could steal your car, steal your identity, destroy your business with a targeted hack, and you'd be fine with the police not investigating because there are still murderers and rapists out there? Alrighty then. Crime is crime and it all deserves to be investigated. Some crimes are worse but it's not like they put them in order, start with the murderers and completely ignore the rest.

    7. Re:Yay! by Dishevel · · Score: 2
      But a value does in fact exist.

      The Value of Life

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    8. Re:Yay! by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      Must mean they've already caught all the murderers, rapists, serial killers, and other dangerous criminals, now they have to turn to this.

      FBI doesn't do murders, rapists, serial killers, etc. Those are the business of State & local law enforcement.

      The FBI mostly does counterfeiting and kidnapping (and they only do kidnapping because the Lindbergh Baby was a potential source of good publicity for J. Edgar Hoover).

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    9. Re:Yay! by westlake · · Score: 1

      Must mean they've already caught all the murderers, rapists, serial killers, and other dangerous criminals, now they have to turn to this.

      Law enforcement multi-tasks.

      The Slashdot geek tends to believe that his elite technical skills have earned him a lifetime "Get Out Of Jail Free" card --- and will go miles out of his way to let you know it.

    10. Re:Yay! by westlake · · Score: 1

      The FBI mostly does counterfeiting and kidnapping (and they only do kidnapping because the Lindbergh Baby was a potential source of good publicity for J. Edgar Hoover).

      The Lindbergh kidnapping is the kidnapping-for-ransom that everyone remembers from that era.

      There were others.

      The fear then and now was such kidnappings would become a commonplace - organized - crime, as it has become in other countries.

    11. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the FBI exists to deal with crimes that cross jurisdictional boundaries. They do kidnapping because it's easier for them to do that than it is to worry about state lines before you located the perpetrator and the victim. In this day and age it's so easy to cross into other jurisdictions that it would be ridiculous to have to work your way up to larger and larger jurisdictions before you've located the people involved.

    12. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [citation needed]: the article.
      22 counts.
      Not trying to disagree, just surprised.

    13. Re:Yay! by Nimey · · Score: 0

      Back in the '90s the NYPD discovered that if you enforce laws against minor offenses like jaywalking, littering, etc. then there will be less serious crime in that same area.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    14. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's clearly not at all what was being said. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what was being said.

      Comments here just keep getting dumber.

    15. Re:Yay! by Dishevel · · Score: 1
      Well for many things you really have to put a value on life.

      We can save lives by putting up massive crush barriers between the streets and the sidewalks and putting pedestrian tunnels or overpasses at each and every intersection in the US. The cost would be enormous. In the end it would be a really bad choice because IT (the cost) would not be WORTH IT (the lives saved).

      Of course as people we do not say that 100 lives are just not worth a 400 billion dollar expenditure. But we, even as individuals do inherently assign a value to a life nonetheless.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    16. Re:Yay! by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      They do do serial killers (f they kill in more than one state) and don't do counterfeiting. That's for the SS.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    17. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is FBI, not local law enforcement. Crime isn't just crime at Federal level, and priority is applied. That the FBI is used for this, rather than say some other IP body, speaks a lot.

      Also, the FBI is, to the detriment of the rest of the world, really 'The World Police'. They operate in almost every country on the planet. Call it 'joint operations' with LLE, or 'cooperating agencies', but they're the 'World Police' for better or worse.

      Gotta protect that 'Intellectual Property', right? Far more important than domestic dangerous criminals, organized crime, human trafficking, illegal arms sales, high seas piracy, illegal goods importation, ... I could go on.

    18. Re:Yay! by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      We even do it to ourselves when we buy life insurance.

    19. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so until every one of these felons on the face of the earth is apprehended property crimes are no longer to be investigated or pursued? Thanks for the insipid argument.

    20. Re:Yay! by Kyogreex · · Score: 2

      It should be obvious that when you rule with an iron fist, people will shy away from more serious crimes. The question is if people are really better off.

    21. Re: Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      murderers and rapists are good for the 'conomy. Gash, i thought you were s'posed to be smart.

    22. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yawn. Ok, so when your house gets broken into, we'll be sure to let the police know that they don't have to show up because they should be out catching the "real" criminals.

    23. Re:Yay! by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 1

      If they were off doing some SWAT operation to bang in some guy's door for uploading some movies to the internet instead, yes I have every right to be upset.

      Police are a limited resource, a resource that should be used against dangerous and lethal crime. So if the police couldn't make it to my house for a robbery right away because they were tied up bringing down some crime kingpin, that I can perfectly accept. But if they're going to waste their time on some large corporation's IP, I'll be damned if I'm okay with that, and it's appalling to think others do.

      And this happens all the time in poor urban neighborhoods, there just aren't enough police to deal with all the crime.

    24. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Njorthbiatr,

      Grow. The. Fuck. Up.

    25. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like in Syria, Libya, and Egypt?
      Tickets for littering isn't "ruling with an iron fist".

    26. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just like India has solved all of its poverty and pollution problems before sending something to Mars...

    27. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      murder is murder no matter the quantity of lives destroyed.

      Yes but mass murder is more severe than a single murder, so sorry but until the more severe murders have been solved we solve the murder of your single child.

    28. Re:Yay! by mjwx · · Score: 1

      And here I learn that laws can only be enforced when all more severe crimes have been fully handled.

      "Sorry, we can't pursue this murder of your child, Mr. Smith, the genocide in Darfur isn't resolved yet."

      Why would the FBI be handling the genocide in Dafur, the FBI is a domestic law enforcement agency. Things like genocide and other war crimes are handled by the International Court of Justice at the Hague (more informally called the "world court")

      There are different levels of law enforcement so that small crimes aren't lost in the big crimes. However the FBI shouldn't be concentrating on things like industrial espionage and copyright infringement as these are pretty victimless crimes and in the case of copyright infringement, not a criminal case at all. Funding should be removed for all copyright infringement enforcement as it's been demonstrated time and time again, piracy actually increases sales. There's no economic or societal benefit to enforcing it what so ever.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    29. Re:Yay! by Kyogreex · · Score: 1

      "People have it worse in X so we shouldn't be concerned about problem Y" is not even the least bit constructive.

  3. They didn't accidentally anything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Retitle: How an FBI mole stole a pre-release xbox one from hackers.

    1. Re:They didn't accidentally anything by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      ..or rather how fbi mole something loaded with xbox one devkit?

      can it even play any games? is it functional in any way? someone was just stupid enough to shell out 5 k for it. if someone was stupid enough to buy something like that, the seller could be tempted just to throw windows 8.1 on it and call it xbox one, any differences would be user error..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Someone wanted an Xbox One at launch??? by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Funny

    They should have known it was a setup when someone offered to buy an Xbox One.

    I kid, I kid. ;-)

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    1. Re:Someone wanted an Xbox One at launch??? by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 1

      Or are you kidding?

      O_o

    2. Re:Someone wanted an Xbox One at launch??? by RogueyWon · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, lots of people wanted an Xbox One at launch. The XB1's sales curve has been really weird.

      It had pretty great month-1 sales. It would have had the fastest month-1 sales of any console in history - if it hadn't launched alongside the PS4 (which broke the previous records by an even larger margin). But some time shortly after Christmas, the sales basically flatlined. First MS switched to talking about "units shipped" rather than "units sold" and then it stopped issuing new numbers at all.

      By piecing together bits and pieces of retailer and regional sales data, it's possible to get a broad understanding of where the console stands now. Having originally been tipped to pass the Wii-U and take second-place in current gen sales somewhere around April, it appears that it probably only did so some time in September (and indeed, it certainly hasn't officially been announced yet, so there's at least an outside chance it's still in third). It's had several significant sales blips, driven first by the price cut when Kinnect was removed and then again by Destiny, but background sales outside of these blips have been generally very slow throughout 2014.

      It's actually pretty similar to (though marginally better than) the sales profile for the Wii-U. That console actually sold well during its first 6 weeks or so on sale, before flatlining. Each first-party Nintendo game since then has caused a small 1-week spike in sales, but after Mario Kart, diminishing returns appear to be kicking in.

      In regional terms, The Xbox One appears to be in a fairly solid second place in the US (behind the PS4), a distant second place in Europe (again behind the PS4) and third place in Japan. Indeed, the PS4 is also doing badly in Japan - home console gaming is dying in that market and even the Wii-U (which holds first place there) is doing badly compared to the last gen consoles.

      The Xbox One does still have a few big irons in the fire and isn't quite in a Wii-U style Last Chance Saloon yet (if Smash Bros and Bayonetta 2 don't turn around the Wii-U's fortunes this Christmas, the console essentially can be considered dead). Forza Horizon 2 is a fairly big draw and Halo 5 will be a bigger one. But MS have certainly gone backwards since the days of the 360, when they dominated the US and managed a reasonable draw with Sony in Europe. In marketshare terms, the Xbox One looks a lot more like the original Xbox.

      Though in general terms, this has been an extremely boring year for console games anyway. People get excited about new console releases, forgetting that they tend to be followed by 12 months during which there isn't much worth playing for them. It's always the later years of the cycle that are more fun in terms of game releases.

    3. Re:Someone wanted an Xbox One at launch??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And now they have to play a nice game of whac-a-mole in their hive .. using Xbox controllers.

  5. How Hackers Got Money by Ksevio · · Score: 2

    Looks more like the "Hackers" took $5000 from the FBI. They could have just been scammers and not even had one.

    1. Re:How Hackers Got Money by tomhath · · Score: 2

      They could have been scammers, except they actually handed it over it to someone who said he would send it to the Seychelles. Turns out the person who picked it up was working for the FBI. After they took the money they were going to be arrested for either fraud or piracy.

  6. Title Is Misleading by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

    It wasn't a pre-release Xbox One, it was off-the-shelf components that met Xbox One pre-release specs. However given the systems they hacked, what they have been charged with, and why they might have wanted to assemble one, it wouldn't surprise me if they loaded it with Xbox One development kit software.

    1. Re:Title Is Misleading by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      bought a hardware mockup of an Xbox One that the group built using source code stolen from Microsoft's Game Developer Network Portal

      *twitch* You don't make a hardware mockup out of source code. An editor somewhere needs to be slapped.

      Either it's a "hardware mockup" and it doesn't work because it doesn't have the software, or it's just a "mockup" and maybe it does work. Next, they'll be telling me it's Digital and has All The p's.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
    2. Re:Title Is Misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uh... the software "dev-kit" for a console makes very specific assumptions about the hardware it runs on... so a "hardware mockup" is required... maybe not 100% to specs because of all the anti-DRM bits that are probably filtered out with an emulation layer.

      go slap yourself, monkey.

    3. Re:Title Is Misleading by TangoMargarine · · Score: 1

      I made no claim about what the software needs to run.

      A) I read "mockup" as "nonfunctional version." If it works, I would've said something more along the lines of "they hacked up a X-compatible."
      B) Saying "hardware X" tells me that it specifically *doesn't* have all the required software to act functionally similar. If it did, you'd just call it "an X."

      From Wikipedia:

      In manufacturing and design, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup is a prototype if it provides at least part of the functionality of a system and enables testing of a design.[1] Mock-ups are used by designers mainly to acquire feedback from users.

      Note that if it were functional, it would be called a prototype, not a mockup. It sounds like mockups are only really useful for wind tunnel tests, general design feedback, etc.

      makes very specific assumptions about the hardware it runs on... so a "hardware mockup" is required

      Or, presumably, an emulator.

      --
      Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
  7. Your post is too long ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... FBI moles make long posts.

    Just sayin'.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:Your post is too long ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So do Microsoft shills... But hey, they're the same thing these days anyway. Federal Bureau of Intellectual Property

  8. Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by Walking+The+Walk · · Score: 1, Informative

    From the way the article describes it, the FBI actually stole the group's home-made XBox-like computer. The group used stolen login credentials to get the XBox specs and built a rig to spec with parts bought from NewEgg. Apparently a group of XBox enthusiasts paid $5000 for it (they knew it was a home-made rig), but then the guy who was supposed to send it to them handed it to the FBI instead.

    To summarize: Group builds a computer with same specs as XBox. Group agrees to sell it to another group, and is paid $5000. During delivery it instead ends up in the hands of the FBI.

    --
    A recursive sig
    Can impart wisdom and truth
    Call proc signature()
    1. Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Reading comprehension is hard. The group built the mockup and sold it for $5000. The person who picked it up from them claimed to be an XBox enthusiast, but actually worked for the FBI.

    2. Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by alex4u2nv · · Score: 1

      They would have had to steal more than just specs. They'd need the operating system, or source code as mentioned in the article, to make it functional.

      --
      -Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
    3. Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by Walking+The+Walk · · Score: 1

      Reading comprehension is hard. The group built the mockup and sold it for $5000. The person who picked it up from them claimed to be an XBox enthusiast, but actually worked for the FBI.

      Did you read to the end? I saw this quote:

      While he was traveling in Prague, "I actually woke up, and lo and behold there is five grand sitting in my bank account," Wheeler said. "It came through, and we went 'OK!' and we sent it."

      Where he said "we" (his group) sent it. Then I read the very next bit:

      Around August 9, 2012, someone identified in the indictment as "Person A" went to Leroux's residence in Maryland and picked up the device. Person A was instructed to send the device to an address in the Seychelles. But Wheeler said he heard through the group that the package never arrived.

      Where he said that "Person A was instructed to send the device" and "he heard through the group [xbox enthusiasts who paid for it] that the package never arrived." So the story says that a group paid for it, he gave it to someone with instructions to send it to that group, then the group said it never arrived. The article continues with:

      According to the indictment, Person A -- whose real name Wheeler said he knows -- gave the package to the FBI.

      So the guy was supposed to send it to the purchasers (who you'll recall complained that it never arrived), but he gave it to the FBI instead. There's a follow-on quote where Wheeler says the FBI bought the device, but that seems to contradicts his earlier statement that his first warning about being caught was that the purchasers complained the shipment never arrived.

      --
      A recursive sig
      Can impart wisdom and truth
      Call proc signature()
    4. Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by Cramer · · Score: 1

      "We at the FBI prefer the term intercepted. Thank you."

      And the FBI didn't steal it. One of their group (or an intermediary) was given the box and then didn't send it to whomever they promised they would.

    5. Re:Stolen by the FBI, not sold to them by Tharkkun · · Score: 1

      Wait? This is a 2 year old story...

  9. Nice to meet your mole! (Don't say "mole") by tippe · · Score: 2

    Moley-moley-moley-moley-moley!

    Ah man, I've got to watch Austin Powers again. What a classic!

  10. Obligatory by Meneth · · Score: 1

    You can't "steal" intellectual "property".

    1. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      According to whom? The law is pretty clear; whether you like the law or not is another issue.

    2. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it is pretty clear - you can't steal IP. You can, however, infringe it.

    3. Re:Obligatory by cas2000 · · Score: 1

      the law is even clearer than that - there's no such thing as "intellectual property". there's copyright and patents and even trademarks (and all three are completely different things with completely different laws), but "IP" doesn't exist.

    4. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      IP is a briefer way of referring to those three things.

  11. Why is the FBI doing this? by Squidlips · · Score: 1

    Do the Hollywood moguls really run the country? Of course they do...

    1. Re:Why is the FBI doing this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This looks like you're defending criminal gangs. I thought the Slashdot groupthink was to excuse private infringement of copyright by individuals, but not the commercial redistribution of someone else's bits by these organized groups.

  12. Stupid... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

    ... Lets steal from microsoft and then talk about it on a communication protocol they completely control.

    What.

    Could.

    Possibly.

    Go.

    Wrong?

    Use ventrilo or team speak or mumble or something. Send in an email; go to this server, use this user name, join this channel.

    Easy.

    Can the FBI take over the server or pull logs from it? Maybe... depends on where it is... there are chat servers all over the world. Use one based in Brazil or something. It will slow them down. And try not to use the same server more then once. Jump around. Do different stuff. Be paranoid. it isn't if they really are out to get you... and if you're a group of hackers stealing secrets from a well connected multi billion dollar industry... then they are out to get you. These guys were sloppy and paid the price for it.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
  13. I'm the only one suprised... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...that a group of entusiats were able to get the hardware layout, the stolen firmware, the tools required to compile and burn that stuff. Made their own PCB, soldered all the parts and sold it as cheap as $5000. And were able to make it berfore the Xbox release?

    And all that slashdot is talking about is the mole and the FBI.

  14. not enough child abusers to keep the Feds busy by ihtoit · · Score: 0

    Bullshit.

    I could run off a collective list of people to investigate:

    Every police officer
    Every politician
    Every individual with any ties to British Royalty
    Every social worker
    Every teacher
    Every doctor
    Every judge
    Every other individual who has regular contact with OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  15. If you believe that by penguinoid · · Score: 1

    The device, which the FBI paid $5,000 for, was supposed to be sent to the Seychelles, but never arrived, which indicated the hacking collective had a mole.

    Could someone please leak to the FBI that I'm selling illegal, pre-release bridges? Only $5 million each, plus shipping and handling. If anyone is interested you can contact me at obviousscam@didyoureallybelievethat.com

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  16. Hurray! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Look, it's the NotGodwin's Law, in the wild!