Xbox Underground: An Intriguingly Cautionary Tale of Cyber Crime
Xbox Underground, a hacker group, infiltrated major companies and military servers, stealing sensitive data. Their crimes led to harsh sentences and lasting personal consequences. Members now regret their actions and have rebuilt their lives.
Table Of Content
Xbox was the spectacle of the early 2000s. Nearly everyone recalled the Xbox. Some remembered it for the revolutionary games, others as it being the medium of some of the deadliest hacks known to man. This is the anecdote of Xbox Underground (the hacker team that shook the foundation of cybersecurity).
In 2008, David and some friends (Nathan, Dylan, Sanad, Austin, and Justin) obtained several developer versions of Xbox and entered the partner net, a place to test beta versions of new games. Innumerable legal cautions were disregarded, and countless lines crossed as their list of crimes accumulated.
Their offences escalated to an entirely distinct eschelon. They hacked into an Epic Games employee's mail and got into the server (Epic Games Server). Mayhem initiated as they rummaged through the servers, tattling any information they could uncover. Bedlam ensued in the following months at Epic Games. They finally called the FBI to launch a formal investigation; however, this did not deter them; it only inspired them to go bigger and worse.
In the following years, they were on the servers of Microsoft, Activision, Blizzard, EA, Valve, Intel, AMD, WB, Disney, and even Google. Millions of customer details are all under the tip of their fingers. In their two years of rein, they had hacked over twenty-five large companies and the US and Australian military. This absolute obliteration of privacy and security gave them pride and made them feel invincible, so they craved more. They stole the blueprints for Xbox One and built it themselves. They put it on eBay to taut the FBI. But the FBI took the sale down. That event struck a sense of fear in them. The fear turned to paranoia. They all asked themselves the one question they never thought:
What if they catch us?
Xbox Underground split. The members lay low, but the thrill could not keep them away for long. They got news of prototypes of Xbox One being kept at Microsoft. Therefore, they orchestrated a scheme to steal three Xbox prototypes for themselves and succeeded. However, this slip-up in their judgment gave the FBI enough security camera footage to catch them. Thus ending their reign of terror in the world of cybersecurity.
Their sentences were harsh. They varied from person to person. Some got eighteen months, some two years, and one eight years. Whatever their punishment was, life after prison was more harmful. Most got depression for the preponderance of their lives, and one even took their own life. The hacks might have given them ecstasy for the moment, but the price was high. The surviving members of Xbox Underground look back at their lives in regret, wishing that no other person ever goes down that trail. Now they have all served their sentences and have built their lives into a better and more beautiful one.