One of 2ch’s notorious blood festivals has begun as trojans distributed amongst prospective Pokémon pirates have seen the illegal contents of many a hard disk laid bare for scores of creepy Internet vigilantes to have their way with.
Patches to remove the secret copy protection of Pokémon Black and White were swift in coming, but many downloading these patches got more than they bargained for – in the form of having a trojan expose the illegal contents of their computer to the prying eyes of the Internet at large.
Whilst the crack itself was an inevitability, the mess created by having to not only obtain it but also run a gauntlet of hackers is surely a boon to Nintendo’s anti-piracy efforts – even a modicum of risk or difficulty is enough to deter a significant portion of pirates, most of whom are likely to be pathetically unsophisticated (as evidenced by the fact that even simple UAC can thwart the virus).
Those tempted to dismiss such antics as mere hacker hijinks may wish to recall the case of a school principal exposed as a probable lolicon by just such a virus.
Whilst a civil servant might be untouchable in Japan, mere NEETs and salarymen desperate for their free Pokémon fix may yet find themselves in trouble.
lol wonder if the hackers were red hats working for Nintendo
GOOD! Usually I don’t like 2chan but this is one time I like them. Oh and two the guy who had the shown quote on the story about housing. Yes if housing was patented it would be perfectly fine if they denied it to people who were not able to afford it. What you don’t pay for you don’t get. Capitalism HO motherfuckers
[quote]Pokémon Patch Pirates Hit by Hackers[/quote]
Amazing anaphora, Artefact.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should NEVER disable UAC.
Always disable UAC. It’s annoying. Just use a virtual box. Easy.
Just… buy… the damn…game.
It’s not that expensive anyways. Not worth the risk of exposing yourself to the internet community
Lol, i’m already playing this pokemon fully in my flashcard, i can even use the C-GEAR, their problem should be fixed already as well, unless they are stupid
You’re so hardcore. How does it feel to be so proud of stealing a children game?
Good. Fucking dirtbags.
This is news? These people are just stupid for running exe’s they don’t know who made them.
This could go for any program they just posted hacks they already had and renamed it to Pokemon and people are dumb enough run them.
*LOL* This just keeps getting better. Keep providing me with entertainment, 2chan pirates & hackers. XD
mfw I patched the rom manually, played it normally on the first day and already done with the game, which is awesome, btw.
I already had a trojan before I downloaded it. its still been rid of.
Stupid Japs, they could have prevented having their files accessed by 2ch script kiddies by simply searching for patches on gbatemp.
Stopping crime with crime? The online community is looking worse and worse every day.
Like waging war against war?
The virtual worlds Celestial Being?
holy shit look at the desktop icons.
that’s alot of games. did he dled them too?
[quote]Pokémon Patch Pirates Hit by Hackers[/quote]Amazing anaphora, Artefact.
since 2ch threads last a considerable amount of time would be interesting if you put a link to the threads in the article.
In many countries, those “vigilantes” would face severe punishment, due to the malicious nature of trojans.
It’s basically criminals in a moral sense versus real criminals who potentially destroy the property of other people.
LOL! I like how the last pic’s guy’s computer desktop has all its RPG’s organized. Play now, Playing, Cleared, Done, and Play Next.
The patch was to change a few values using a hex editor. If you really needed a patch to do something simple like that and you downloaded something that was 1MB+ then you deserve to be hacked. haha
Especially when the RakuRaku patch, which is basically a GUI front-end so that it will patch the ROM with the input hex values automatically, is just 22 KB…
You could always run those in VirtualBox
mwahahaha…
soon we’ll be able to play pokemon…
i’m waiting english version though…
still have to wait 1 year…
Great to see thieves get what they deserve.
I might have to start putting these up on 4chan myself
Don’t even bother trying. There is some honor amongst thieves, after all, and you’re as much of a thief as they are by putting it up on their servers.
What? The article says nothing about politicians… aaah… you mean the petty thieves.
The date of the last picture is in the spring.
It’s showing a previous hack.
Huh, that’s odd. Patching against copyright protection for the DS has been going on for a long while. It’s kinda strange that only now, when it’s freaking Pokemon is there an actual attempt to combat it.
The sad part is, it will accomplish jack and the piracy will continue. The only thing it accomplishes is a little slowdown.
Bad: Pirating the game. And this is coming from someone that does it himself. We know it’s bad; we do it anyways.
Pathetic: hackers taking advantage of the situation of finding a patch to pry into peoples’ PCs.
Shouldn’t it be:
“Pathetic: criminals berating other criminals”?
Different levels of criem my man, just like RL crime. According to criminals… Go to prison for murder = ok. Go to prison for rape = bad. Criminals judging criminals online is just like RL. Awesome.
Wait… Going to prison for rape is wrong? Man, I should stop living under a rock. I miss on society’s latest developments!
I’m pretending the pics of GameCenter CX are from the hackers screen – because that’d make him an awesome dude.
The fake shit is an annoying-as-fuck obstacle for the people who are obviously too intelligent to fall for them. I’ve never been a victim to a virus, but damn those script kid ass-wipes do waste my time of having to go find the real stuff.
it will take you less time go and buy the real thing, no?
lol.
I do like the idea of hackers giving viruses to wannabe pirate children. You know, the computer illiterate kids in middle school/high school who don’t know what a patch is and think it’s cool they can just get whatever they want from the Internets.
Let them learn first hand that they can’t be idiots if they want to be a pirates.
I hope Nintendo is watching, actually seriously, I DO hope they are watching.
The ONLY way to defeat pirates, is to make no one interested in risking them.
90% of the schmucks out there downloading, haven’t the needed brains to identify a real download from fake shit.
They’ll quit downloading if they can’t afford to take the risk.
All Nintendo needs to do, is be the hackers and destroy confidence in hacks and they win. But nah, that would be ‘smart’ and I can’t possible imagine a corporation being able to think that far out of the box.
There is some suspicion Nintendo has, like Microsoft, been tacitly tolerating a certain level of piracy…
You’re stupid.
If nintendo began to hack pirates like this:
1. They’d get sued many times (who cares if they’d win every case, they’d still lose money)
2. If someone discovered Nintendo is behind it, the company would lose it’s reputation = lesser profits in the future.
3. I dunno if I’m wrong, but I thought hacking is as much of a crime as piracy.
4. What if someone who wasn’t attempting to pirate any of their games downloaded their hax by accident?
Besides every antivirus would get updated as soon as someone reports their new virus and their plan wouldn’t work = more work on a new virus which means more cash lost and still no profit.
1.-sued? why? for people giving wrong use to their products? lol, that kind of legal actions are dismissed pretty quick.
2.-Reputation? for what? prevent piracy? you know they will be hailed by the whole industry?
3-DUH! not if piracy was the first step.
4-who can download it without looking for the patch? lol
I think the japanese need to learn what a anti-virus program is, and to manually scan each file they download like I do.. Mostly. Video’s “seem” to be safe. least the anime fansubs I DL.
isn’t it pretty much impossible to attach a virus to a video or audio file?
You think an anti-virus program can reliably protect you?
…
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH…
*gasp*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sorry. That was just too funny…
If you’re using Microsoft Security Essentials, it will. That free antivirus has a virus definition that rivals the top names. Unlike that POS AVG, which is guaranteed to let viruses infect your pc.
Problem: that is not commom sense. Not only among the Japanese, but the majority of people.
I know many people who can use the computer for basic stuff, like surfing the interwebs and reading e-mails, but don’t even think about the possibility of getting a Virus or Trojan, because their computer never got infected till now, or they don’t know if it’s already infected. This is because:
– they don’t have any antivirus installed at all, because of what was said above.
– don’t even know how an anti-virus should be used
– don’t do a regular scan.
Also, a antivirus may not suffice against trojans and spywares. If you’re too paranoid about security, you will obviously get a slow machine with all the security software you have installed on it. That’s also one of the main excuses some people give to explain why they don’t even have an antivirus on their machines.
this why I use windows for gaming & app compatibility purposes only.
Game cracks are “gaming purposes”, you know.
same question with anime and manga, how and where to buy ?
btw, people exposed to virus the moment the connect to the internet. simple banner in sankakucomplex can also contain virus if the advertiser screwed up.
They are all on our servers so that is not, strictly speaking, correct.
sorry to tell you this but you may have just made a challenge against the hackers who saw that comment to see if it can be done
SO many shortcuts, yet only 5% of them are actually used, 10% are decoys and 90% accidentally coca cola bottles.
Idiots. There is always a prepatched rom link.
Anyone can tell wtf happened? read twice but can’t understand who got what and whos is against whom?
Really? I wonder if there is a hack proof portable gaming console, anyway?
“Hack proof” is an illusion of security through obscurity. The only “unhackable” devices are the ones that don’t pose enough interest for the hacker community.
Why do people of Japan even need to hack the game?
Ain’t it cheaper in the land where it was made?
US games aren’t cheaper in the US. Why would Jap games be cheaper in Japan?
While games in the EU are technically more expensive, the VAT we pay is far less than the US income tax at the end of the year.
Comparing VAT to income tax is meaningless. Overall tax rates are much higher in the EU than US.
All taxes are from and for the government.
What do you mean “overall tax rates”? VAT is the government taxes.
No… that’s the opposite.
Even anime goods (DVDs in particular).
Many games are ridiculously expensive in Japan.
but games are not needed to live, like land or food.
Pokemon games are far from expensive.
Land and food are the most expensive items in japan compared to another place in the world.
the example about copyrights makes no sense. Again games, movies or comics are dispensable items.
pirates dont download just one game they cant afford.
You don’t need a roof over your head to live either. Homeless people manage without them.
Hypothetically speaking, if someone owned copyrights on housing, would it be ok if they denied the privilege to anyone who couldn’t afford paying them $5000/year?
What if someone owned copyrights on a life saving drug… oh wait, never mind.
No way in hell any rational pirate would think Pokemon of all things was worth this much trouble
Well… it happened in 2ch…
In Japan Pocket Monster is popular is enough that they would go to all this trouble to just play the game.
That bottom screenshot is actually from that older trojan (you know, the one that came with eroge).
Sadly the desktops of Pokemon fans are rather meagre so I needed an example of the sort of thing which gets leaked…
Now they are getting dirty.
What’s wrong with buying the game in the first place?
if it costs you $30-50 and your nearest game store don’t sell this game then yea….pirate download is the only solution.
It’s just like an STD when you think about it…
Use protection kids.
Like anti-virus software, lol.
But seriously, just buy the damn game and support the people who spent the time to make it.
Considering the fucking shit tons of teenagers have to deal with for the rest of their lives, I’d say to use more than “protection”.
Just buy the fucking game. Even in a minimum wage job, could I just spend half a day working for a game I’ll love for months or even years on end. I don’t see why people want to fuck morality up the ass at so much risk for so little reward (in this case, half a day’s work less).
I’d say playing Pokemon takes a lot of your valuable time then.
The average daily wage in my country for unskilled workers is about 5-7EUR. That’s per day, not per hour. How much did you say this game costs?
@21:41
Finding someone who will hire teens is not easy, especially, since many jobs are considered “not suitable” by the governments.
Not to mention that your lessons are not going to study themselves while you work. There are only 24 hours in a day, of which:
6 hours school
2 hours travel
2 hours meals
8 hours sleep
————–
Total 18 hours taken by your daily routine.
Now, how exactly do you want a kid to manage it’s free time for everything else AND work?
What the hell does that have to do with anything? If you really think it’s that big of a problem, blame your government. I’m pretty sure teens can work as low as 13 in a lot of developed countries with permission. At least, that is how it is here…. So I don’t see the problem. Besides, if you’re smart enough to pirate, your smart enough to get money legitly…
Working is illegal under a certain age.
I really wish all computer viruses were like the one in Independence Day with the laughing skull =)
Seriously if there is one ds game you don’t pirate, it’s pokemon.
I bought heartgold instead of dling the rom solely for the pedometer =/
I really doubt all those wifi features work on roms (for now).
Anyhow. Pokemans.
“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes”
Now you can detect pedos in the area with your new pedometer!
His pedolevel is over 9000! ^_^
Watch your scouter exploding or you might lose an eye. =P
His pedolevel is over 9000! ^_^
so what? basically when you use this patch the CIA and the FBI will know what you’ve downloaded illegally?
The act of downloading is not illegal in many countries.
Including Japan
It was made illegal earlier this year.
Oh you~…
“even a modicum of risk or difficulty is enough to deter a significant portion of pirates”
To think you’d almost have a good article if you didn’t inject nonsense like this. You’ve no basis for such statements so just stick to the facts.
The most simple of firewalls would have blocked the thing sending anything out if you had it setup correctly and moreover WHY are people running cracks outside of a sandbox?
Heck a disposable VM takes seconds to setup for this kind of thing.
Stupid people get caught out by crack, news at eleven. More people get infected by malware and other nasties each day anyway so big whoop.
>”even a modicum of risk or difficulty is enough to deter a significant portion of pirates”
To think you’d almost have a good article if you didn’t inject nonsense like this. You’ve no basis for such statements so just stick to the facts
_____
I have absolutely no idea what point you’re trying to make. Believe it or not, most people are technologically retarded, even pirates, even in glorious Nippon, and they don’t have a fucking clue what a firewall is or a VM. Hell, a lot of pirates need a walkthrough on how to mount an .iso or uncompress a .rar file.
Therefore, a significant proportion of pirates *are* likely to be put off by something that it dangerous to people who only have very basic computer knowledge. This is one of those rare occasions in which Artefact is completely correct.
Rare occasions? I don’t see you offering your sage wisdom anywhere else to set me aright.
Oh, like you were born knowing how to extract RARs or mount ISOs.
All you need is a virus possibility to prevent moms from having their kids use a r4. Don’t see why you are all so worked up?
You can’t be serious. How many mums do you think even know what a virus is?
I’m not sure why you think anyone is “worked up” over anything.
Maybe those viruses magically found their way onto peoples machines. I don’t think risk plays any part in someone desire to get something for free. Feel free to prove me wrong.
I do all that, but that doesn’t change that I just don’t like the idea of piracy in general. And you lack perspective if you don’t consider game piracy a ‘high risk,’ obviously those of us who have been doing it for years, including myself, know it’s now a streamlined process like tying our shoes, but still, it is a higher risk than most other things you can do on the internet. I was merely speaking from the perspective of the ‘mother’ analogy above, including those who really only know how to e-mail and such.
And I’ve no question I’m average or below average, as I’ve never really researched any identification methods for viruses or how to quarantine them or anything. I’m not of a programmer mindset, it just doesn’t stick in my mind. Perhaps if there were more visual training methods for it I’d have a higher aptitude.
@20:07
If you consider piracy “a high risk”, you are bellow average.
If you stick to trusted sources, keep an up-to-date AV, and most importantly, learn to identify virus ridden spam *cough* comments *cough* generic filenames *cough*, you are safe from anything but a 0-day unpatched remote exploit in your OS or applications. And those are pretty rare.
The age of viruses magically appearing on your box is long gone. Even Windows is not the Swiss cheese of security anymore.
I know I’m the type who’d be deterred by the possibility of hackers. I’d say I’m pretty general in my knowledge of computers, but I don’t dabble in the things that are the high-risk, high-reward scenario like pirating games. Honestly mostly it’s laziness, but I also consider buying the games an enjoyable part of the process actually, and I tend to consider it a failure if I am somehow needing to play them pirated. The only time I even did anything beyond SNES games was because I discovered the concept of UNDUBs for Ar Tonelico and Persona 3 and 4. I still purchased them though, so my conscience is completely clear.
While around here most people are at least moderately computer literate, there is no shortage of people who have no clue what the fuck they’re doing. You know, the ones who try putting, “free download”, in their search queries, or use a certain OS because it, “doesn’t get viruses”.
Screw someone, get screwed.
the only one that has caught it all would probably be Paris Hilton along with the rest of the whores of America.
everything has to relate to America, huh?
only if you’re stupid enough to get screwed.
smart pirates get it from reliable sources
dumb pirates download the first thing they see
Smart people run shady programs in a sandbox.
‘Smart pirates’ is an oxymoron.
Says anon. phht.
The 3th guys desktop is massive !!
Yeah, I know right ? I was like w00t o.0
“FOLDERS” USE THEM!
**btw it’s 3rd 😛
It is organized though. They’re grouped by whether or not he’s cleared them, what’s he’s currrently playing, and what will come next, and then whether or not those games are RPGs.
What are those folder-like things on that guy’s desktop and where can I get them?
judging from the number of icons in “next” and “rpg_next”, he’s going to be busy for quite a while.
gotta catch em all
I’m trying dammit!!!
Welcome Nintendo, to your worst nightmare. Hackers versus Pirates!
Those vigilantes are in for some nasty surprises themselves. These hack-a-thons are a two way street.
Nintendo (unfortunately…) has much deeper pocket than the NEET’s ETC ever will and then a dedicated Nintendo R&D sector will start devising some really nasty rootkits like Sony was doing back in the 90’s and even though Sony lost that war
(Sony should have wiped the music pirates systems clean instead of merely disabling their ability to burn music and used a simple legal doc to stave off lawsuits…) it was pretty ugly as hundreds of thousands of people went after Sony.
*Gets popcorn and enjoys the carnage*
you cant spell nintendo with H-A-C-K… oh, you can? quickly! back to the drawing board!!!
-thebeast
I have to ask 2CH though. Why do they get pissed off when Foreigners pirate manga, and anime but they pirate stuff as well? That is the true definition of hypocrisy. We can’t pirate japan’s stuff but they sure can. Makes no fucking sense. A pirate is a pirate, no matter what nationality or content.
Please god someone translate this into Japanese and forward this to 2CH. I’d love to see some more hypocritical responses!
i never thought i’d see the day when pirates and hackers collide….
this could get ugly -_-‘
you just can’t see it
>implying anyone with a decent anti virus can get this
I come to this site less and less with all the biased statements and dumbass articles based on 2chan rumors.
Ninjas are already fighting
Ninjas will be showing up soon, then we’ll have the battle of the century
ninjas will beat the hackers
and then be beaten by pirates
pirates>ninjas>hackers>pirates
finally we got balance
nintendo sux
Friendly Fire isn’t Friendly.
Because it’s fun?
Serves them right for bothering with shit like Pokemon. If you are older than 10 what the hell are you doing with that shit?
I don’t think it was ever friendly. Pirates are the ultimate fair-weather friends. Hackers only get praise when they appease the pirates, otherwise they’re whiny little whores 90% of the time. Pretending they’re somehow on the same team is a pleasant fiction though.
Nothing good comes from friendly fire……
@Slyar
Obvious, troll is obvious.
2/10
Hackers might be outsourced by Nintendo for all we know.
owned
I NEED scissors 69
hackers , the ninjas of the internet , so.. does this mean its another battle of internet ninjas vs internet pirates? XD
Haxors… you may slow down the pirates but you’re not gonna stop them.
All of these images are based on a single majikon device, and I’ve only seen this here so far despite browsing 2ch 5 days ago. Both articles are late and low impact, but anything for hits I suppose.
The Patriots!
Luffy, I choose you!
It’s a conspiracy! NHK!
If they’re modifying or creating programs with malicious intent, they’re crackers, not hackers. Hackers are just people who edit or make programs.
This is what I was thinking. Some of these hackers might actually be “anonymous” Nintendo employees.
Or: Nintendo ARE the Hackers
“You’re stupid.
If nintendo began to hack pirates like this:
1. They’d get sued many times (who cares if they’d win every case, they’d still lose money)
2. If someone discovered Nintendo is behind it, the company would lose it’s reputation = lesser profits in the future.
3. I dunno if I’m wrong, but I thought hacking is as much of a crime as piracy.
4. What if someone who wasn’t attempting to pirate any of their games downloaded their hax by accident?”
The above was stupid beyond stupid.
Someone sue Nintendo [insert 10 minutes of laughter] what a dumb idea.
If Nintendo DID this, they increase their reputation with me actually. I’d respect them even more for creatively telling pirates to get fucked.
Doesn’t even need to be a hack, I’d be all for just releasing cleverly arranged bombshells in enough numbers and versions that people got tired of trying.
Nothing malicious or damaging required, merely worthless and time consuming.
Accidentally downloading illegal files? Are you fucking serious? Fuckem if their computer rolls over and dies. Payback is a bitch.
They should do it in creative ways like Konami did with Love Plus +.
It’d make for some hilarious posts in here, I’m sure.
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap*
good say.