14 DAY TRIAL // Australia’s Queensland Police Service has revealed that a 21-year-old resident of the agricultural town of Kingaroy has been arrested and charged with fraud and hacking-related offences. The man is suspected of hacking into the systems of a US-based company that develops online games.
Officers from the State Crime Command’s Fraud and Cyber Crime Group arrested the man on Wednesday. Neither the suspect nor the company he attacked has been named for privacy reasons.
“We would like to acknowledge the assistance of the FBI and the US based gaming company for their assistance in bringing this investigation to a successful close,” said Detective Superintendent Brian Hay of the Fraud and Cyber Crime Group.
The suspect has been charged with three counts of computer hacking and misuse, and five counts of fraud, including dishonestly obtaining property from another, dishonestly apply property to own use, and dishonestly cause detriment and possessing equipment for purpose of committing or facilitating the commission of an offence.
The arrest comes after police executed a search warrant in November 2013. At the time, they seized laptops and a hard drive, which have been forensically analyzed. On the same day as the arrest, law enforcement authorities also executed a search warrant at a property in Poona, where they seized items located within an encrypted container found on a computer.
The man is believed to have hacked into the US company’s networks, accessing files and databases. He also hijacked the game developer’s Twitter account from which he posted information stolen from the company.
Part of the stolen data was used to set up a website that allowed people to search a player database for a certain fee. Police have told Fairfax Media that the database contained players’ IP addresses. Other gamers could use these IP addresses to launch DDOS attacks against their opponents’ routers to prevent them from playing.
The suspect has been released on bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 8 at the Maryborough Magistrates Court. That’s when we’ll find out his name and the name of the company he targeted. The attacks are said to have taken place between July 14 and July 26, 2013.
As far as we could determine, the only attack reported against a gaming company at the time was the one against Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends. However, it’s difficult to say for sure if this is the attack for which the 21-year-old has been charged.