In an unprecedented breach, the hacker group Crimson Collective has allegedly attacked Nintendo, claiming that over 570 gigabytes of extremely sensitive internal data have been extracted from the company. This huge compromise on digital security, if true, would come at a very bad time for the publisher since it is one of the moments of major critical and commercial success of Nintendo.
According to ongoing rumors on social platforms, most of the stolen data are internal reports of development assets, unreleased game previews, stress testing data, and financial and budgeting details. So far, initial reports suggest that the attack did not compromise the personal or payment information of players. The group has also taken to the internet with photos of dozens of file folders, playfully declaring their success in obtaining sensitive material on Nintendo’s upcoming projects.
The attack comes just as Nintendo is experiencing great commercial and critical success, with the new Nintendo Smith 2 having won major sales milestones this year with millions of units sold in the U.S. alone within its first three months of availability; positive reception has also greeted first-party titles such as Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. If verified through an independent forensics review, the breach will cast a big shadow over this otherwise glorious business cycle for Nintendo and will likely accelerate further internal audits of their network infrastructure.
For Nintendo, this alleged breach may represent the biggest direct security incident in the last five years, with memories going back to the 2020 breach when over 160,000 user accounts were compromised and the online security standard was revised. Crimson Collective, the organization claiming this attack, is not an unknown entity in corporate cyberspace. They previously worked on breaches of cloud services for significant corporations, namely Red Hat and Claro Colombia; Nintendo’s public website was defaced last September according to one of their claims. The entire industry now awaits an official statement to determine the full and actual extent of the damage inflicted on Nintendo.
