Alleged Nintendo blackmailer arrested in Spain

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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Spanish police have arrested a man who is alleged to have attempted to blackmail video game giant Nintendo after accessing the personal information of 4,000 gamers.

According to online sources, names, email address and postal codes were accessible via a security vulnerability on a website that Nintendo was using to promote its upcoming Nintendo 3DS console in 12 Spanish cities.

Nintendo’s Spanish division is said to have contacted the authorities in early February, after the young man threatened to contact the Spanish Data Protection agency, believing that the firm had shown negligence in not securing the information more effectively.

Having not had any response, the man is said to have released a portion of the data on a gaming forum, and threatened to expose more details.

The man, who was arrested in the southern province of Malaga according to…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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