Hacker arrested over Nintendo extortion

By Aemon Malone February 15, 2011

Police in Spain have arrested a man who is accused of stealing the personal information of thousands of Nintendo users and threatening to go public with it unless his demands were met.

The hacker allegedly approached Nintendo Ibérica, Nintendo’s Spanish division, accusing the company of data negligence and threatening to release the hacked information on the Internet. The hacker allegedly lifted the details of some 4,000 accounts last week. It’s not clear if the information the man is accused of taking came from an official Nintendo website or from a third-party site.

According to police, the hacker followed through on his threat and published some of the information on an Internet forum after Nintendo had ignored his demands. Nintendo then notified authorities who arrested the man in the southern Spanish province of Malaga. Police didn’t haven’t yet revealed what the man was demanding from Nintendo.

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