Nintendo File A Suit For The Switch Console Hijacker

Console Nintendo Switch (Aditya / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Nintendo game company is very serious in fighting piracy, both in its consoles and games. Recently the United States (US) Nintendo has filed two piracy suits to court.

Reported by Polygon, Nintendo filed a copyright protection lawsuit against people who used pirated devices or software on the Switch console. Meanwhile, another lawsuit is aimed at sellers and makers of pirated software against exclusive Nintendo content.

Of the two lawsuits, one of them was filed against Tom Diits. Jr., which is the operator of the UberChips site. This lawsuit is also directed at the provider of pirated Nintendo Switch software sites.

It is known that all these sites sell pirated software products from "Team Xecuter". A group that succeeded in creating a pirated operating system, so that it could circumvent the Nintendo Switch's security firewall.

Once installed, users can install pirated games into Nintendo's flagship console. To make matters worse, this group not only managed to hijack Nintendo consoles, but also other new console devices such as the Nintendo Switch Lite, SNES Classic, and PlayStation Mini.

For now, the UberChips page is no longer active. However, several other sites that have been listed in Nintendo's lawsuit are reportedly still active and selling pirated software.

In its lawsuit, Nintendo filed a compensation fee of US $ 2,500 or around Rp. 36.8 million for each violation. In addition, Nintendo also said that the piracy was very detrimental to it.

In fact, this is not the first time Nintendo has clashed with hackers and pirated software makers. At the end of 2018, Nintendo closed the RomUniverse website for displaying "counterfeit copies of the Nintendo trademark" in distributing its pirated software.

Nintendo logo (@nintendouk)

The Successfully Hacked Ninteno Account

Prior to this, this Japanese game company had also been overwhelmed by the hacking of its 160 thousand Nintendo user accounts. This had worried many Nintendo users, because the account was linked to banking information.

In a press release, hundreds of thousands of hacked Nintendo accounts were in Japan and Asia. The hackers are said to use the Nintendo Network ID (NNID) to enter the Victims' Nintendo Accounts.

"ID information and login password (NNID) were obtained from illegal sources outside our service. This incident began to emerge around the beginning of April," said Nintendo in a statement, as summarized from Eurogamer.

In response to recent incidents related to some Nintendo Accounts, it is no longer possible to sign into a Nintendo Account using a Nintendo Network ID. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please visit our Support website for more information: https://t.co/GMrXr5OHW0

- Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) April 24, 2020

Although Nintendo said that the stored banking and credit card data were not hacked successfully. However, many users report that their accounts have purchased PayPal and Pay-items from the Nintendo Store or Nintendo eShop.

As a follow-up to security, Nintendo advises its users to activate Two-step verification or dual security features, which can be accessed via the following site INI. This effort is to minimize the possibility of account hacking in the future.