Mobile game developer Zealot Digital International Corp said it lost about NT$1 million (US$32,798) over two weeks in May after a high-school student from Kaohsiung allegedly hacked its servers to stop his father from playing the company’s games.
The alleged hacker, known as Xiao Jie (小杰), was identified after the police located the Internet Protocol address allegedly used in the attack, police said on Monday without providing details on when the arrest took place.
Xiao Jie is to be charged with violating the Act of Obtaining Property by Threats (恐嚇取財罪), police said.
The hacker first sent an e-mail threatening to freeze the servers of some of the firm’s games if it did not pay a small sum of money, the company said.
Rather than immediately reporting the e-mail to the police, the company said it labeled it a prank and ignored it.
However, the company said it reported the incident to the police after discovering that the numbers of players for Legend of the Dragon Blade and My Hero Go were significantly lower than those over the same period last year, it said.
Police said they suspected the crime might have been committed by a young person because the hacker only asked 0.0163 of a bitcoin (about US$10) in payment.
Police quoted Xiao Jie as saying that he was upset that his father spent so much time playing online games on his mobile phone and computer.
Remembering the names of some of his father’s favorite online games, police said he told them he hatched a plot to take revenge on the games’ manufacturer for his father’s neglect.
Xiao Jie then purchased a malware kit online with information and tools on how to turn computers into “zombies,” so that they can be exploited to disseminate spam and launch denial-of-service attacks, he was quoted by police as saying.
Police said he then succeeded in paralyzing Zealot Digital’s servers.
Xiao Jie was quoted by police as saying that he had no intention of blackmailing the manufacturer, and that he only asked for about US$10 because that was about what had paid for the malware kit.
Police said Xiao Jie told them that he thought that hacking the servers could lead to the online games’ suspension or cause them to slow down, and his father could focus on his family again.
The high-school sophomore said he did not know he had inflicted a huge financial loss on the firm, police said.
Xiao Jie’s father said he was ashamed that his son allegedly became a hacker only to get his attention, adding that he might have neglected his child’s feelings after becoming addicted to the online game Pili Prestige: Legend of the Dragon Blade.
The father said he wanted to apologize to the game manufacturer and other players for his son’s behavior.
Zealot Digital alleged the attack lasted from mid-May to the end of the month and caused it to lose many players, adding that is was the first such attack it had experienced since its founding.
It said it might seek compensation from the hacker.
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