Zammis Clark Breach

From Rare Gaming Dump
Revision as of 12:52, 26 July 2020 by RedBees (talk | contribs) (Initial draft, needs additional contribution from others)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

The Zammis Clark Breach is a massive data breach of internal Nintendo files rumored to be over 2.5TB in size, carried out by British security researcher Zammis Clark.[1]

The breach occurred in March 2018 when Zammis Clark illegally breached and obtained access to Nintendo's internal network, accessing servers used for the development of Nintendo's games and consoles. Zammis downloaded a large number of files from these servers rumored to total over 2.5 terabytes, including the source code and development files for various Nintendo games as well as development repositories for Nintendo systems including the Wii, iQue Player, and 3DS.

While the contents of the breach have not been released publicly in full, a number of files from the breach have been gradually released to the public since it occurred, ranging from the initial release in April 2018 up to July 2020. While the initial releases were done by Zammis himself, Zammis disappeared from the Internet (presumably due to prosecution by law enforcement) in late 2018 before news reports were released in early 2019 stating that he had been arrested for the breach, although not incarcerated due to concerns over his autism making him a potential target while in prison.

Even though Zammis has been arrested and is presumably no longer allowed to access the Internet unsupervised, files from his breach continue to be leaked to the public (primarily on 4chan), implying that Zammis gave out data to a number of individuals prior to his arrest who are now slowly distributing it to the public.

The impact of the Zammis Clark Breach has been massive, releasing development files for a number of Nintendo products and exposing internal documents which were never meant to be seen by the public. Nintendo estimated damages of USD$1.8 million as a result of the breach, and as new items from the breach continue to be released, it remains to be seen what Nintendo properties will be affected and how Nintendo will respond to the situation.

Timeline of Releases

  • <for xprism>
  • https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/28/18286027/microsoft-nintendo-vtech-security-hack-breach-researcher-guilty