Xbox 360 Console Hacker Convicted

United Arab Emirates authorities arrested a hacker after discovering that he hacked Xbox 360 consoles so they could be used to play pirated games.

According to ITP, he even set up a website on which he was offering pirated games but also his services as a professional console cracker, this being one of the clues that helped law enforcement take him down.

To make sure they can convict him, they went under cover and gave the man an unaltered console, requesting him to modify it so it could run bootlegged software.

After he did his job and after he offered illegal games to the investigators, his home was raided and he was arrested.

“As a distributor of genuine Microsoft Xbox games in the UAE, we welcome the actions by the local authorities to ensure that we are able to compete fairly as a legitimate distributor,” said Arvind Agrawal, CEO of LS2 Pluto.

“We hope that consumers understand the dangers of copyright infringement and urge them to report any illegal activity they come across.”

For illegally modifying the Xbox consoles and for copyright infringement, the First Court of Dubai convicted him to three months in jail.

“The law enforcement authorities and judiciary in Dubai have made it very clear that intentionally bypassing game consoles piracy protection mechanisms and then offering for sale or selling pirated Xbox 360 games will not be tolerated in the UAE,” revealed Savas Yucedag, Microsoft Gulf 's anti-piracy manager.

“As Microsoft, we fully support the actions by the authorities to level the playing field for legitimate resellers and ensure that our customers receive the rich experience provided by the Xbox 360 and Kinect platform.”

The sentence may not seem much, but with their actions, UAE authorities hope to discourage any piracy-related activities, especially the ones driven by profit.