Talk:Nintendo data leak

Creation

I moved the content from History of Nintendo to its own article. As there have been more leaks within the past 2 days, I believe this is worthy of its own article that is meant to be about the timeline of Nintendo and their feats.VGPCVGCP (talk) 00:15, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Accuracy

The page conflates multiple leaks from 2018 to 2020 (all originating from the same hack in 2018) as two leaks in 2020. --HiccupJul (talk) 08:32, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

HiccupJul, I'm not super familiar with the details of the leaks. According to the article, the data was stolen in 2018 but not leaked until 2020. Were there leaks before 2020 too? Popcornfud (talk) 15:52, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

There were leaks by the hacker himself in 2018, some small ones in 2019 and a multiple leaks in 2020. I've been cataloguing all the files that have been shared (including dates, links to origin forum posts, filenames etc) but I'm not sure - would this count as original research? There are news articles on the leaks, but they don't go into much detail. Maybe the archived 4chan forum threads could work as sources? I'm also not sure how much detail this article should go into. Anyway, when I've finished my "catalog" of the leaks (I'm missing the exact dates/URLs for some of them) I will be posting it online for others to use as reference. --HiccupJul (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

HiccupJul, thanks for that. We can only go by what reliable sources say (which doesn't include 4chan, unfortunately). See WP:VGRS for examples of the kind of sources we can use. If you can find a reliable source that mentions leaks before 2020 then we can update the article. I haven't looked yet myself. Popcornfud (talk) 17:02, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I think there are a couple moving parts here. Let's say, for now, that the scope of this article is only leaks about Nintendo that were distributed in 2020 (per the title). It's hard to say for certain that everything that has been distributed in 2020 was the result of one or more 2018 hacks. I think that the exact provenance of the data is not disqualifying for the scope of the article because it's so uncertain and unlikely to ever be known for certain. We'll agree to cover it here as long as it was distributed in 2020 and it was about Nintendo. The other issue is HiccupJul asserts that some of the information in the article currently isn't actually from 2020 but was actually distributed earlier between 2018 and now. This may be true according to their catalogue, but we go by what reliable sources say so 4chan and self-report are not sufficient to verify that. If reliable sources report that it's part of the 2020 leak, we have to go with that, even if we believe it may not be true. We can also expand the scope of the article to include other leaks from earlier if we want to cover them in this article. Axem Titanium (talk) 18:51, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I see. I think as I continue to collect info about the leaks, I'll also try and find news articles for each leak, for use as sources here. There are some articles that provide evidence linking the different leaks, so they may come in handy. Re. the general accuracy of the page - it seems to all be correct to me, but I've noticed some inaccuracies in the sources themselves. Not sure how those are meant to be dealt with. --HiccupJul (talk) 19:48, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

That would be great. If you see things you believe to be inaccurate within the sources themselves, you can bring it up here and we can decide whether it makes sense to use our editorial discretion and omit that particular source. Axem Titanium (talk) 02:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

This page should be specific to the 2020 leaks (April and July) unless it is 100 % confirmed the earlier leaks are tied to it. There's a loose idea that the Malawarebytes guy that did the 2018 leak might be involved but that's not proven yet. --Masem (t) 20:05, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Zammis Clark

We are definitely sure that Zammis Clark leaked everything. Also, there is a timeline of all the leaks and some more information. Check this out, it's a good article. https://wiki.mariocube.com/index.php/Zammis_Clark_BreachVGPCVGCP (talk) 20:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Clarification

VGPCVGCP, Zammis Clark did not post anything to 4chan, but all of the data did originally come from him. He sent the stolen files to his friends around 2018-2019 when he still had Internet access, and then that data was gradually leaked over time by his friends or whoever his friends sent them to afterwards.

BroadOn was never hacked. Nintendo of Europe was hacked. Nintendo of Europe had TAR archives of a lot of BroadOn's data, and then that data was downloaded by the hacker, Zammis Clark, then sent to friends, and eventually leaked to 4chan.

The only instance of Zammis Clark techinically leaking anything himself was in 2018 when he posted the long lost Spaceworld '97 ROM to a Discord server. But even considering that to be a leak can be disputed, because he did put a limit on how many people could download it, and the 20 people who downloaded it joined together as a group to make sure nobody posted it anywhere else, until it eventually got leaked to 4chan by someone later on. By 2020, Zammis Clark was already in trouble with the law and unable to use the Internet at all.

About reliable sources, and 4chan, I think the situation is very weird. Regardless of numbers or percentages, a significant majority of the information about these leaks just happens to come from 4chan, however much of it is right or wrong, and a lot of the confusion and misinformation comes from stuff like mainstream news articles and YouTubers wanting to capitalize on the topic. It needs to be made clear that journalists who have no idea what they're talking about should not be what people are relying on for information about this topic, even though things are designed for it to be meant that way. Due to the overall nature of it, it really just takes a certain type of person who's been in the community and knows what's up, to fully be able to understand and communicate about this type of thing.

It is not hard to tell that the reason why whatever Wikipedia has on this topic is mostly either outdated or false is due to Wikipedia's strict policy about reliable sources and whatnot. I don't blame anyone. It's not something that can be easily fixed. However, it can be avoided. Would it be possible to update this page with all the information that's out there, but make it clear to the reader that these are not what Wikipedia would consider to be reliable sources? For example, maybe a notice at the top of the page that says something about that, or maybe it could be made clear through writing, like "There has been a rumor originating from 4chan about the total data from the Nintendo breach being over 2.54 terabytes in size," and then saying "take it with a grain of salt" but more professionally. I think that would be great for this page.

Also, VGPCVGCP, I am one of the people who has been making/editing/writing pages on RGDWiki related to the Nintendo leaks. I appreciate that people have been finding the pages useful. There are a lot more pages that are relevant to the topic than just the one called Zammis Clark Breach, here are a few that I definitely recommend looking at:

• LeakNavbox (navbox for every page related to the leaks)
• List of findings in leaked Nintendo data
• BroadOn data dumps
• unsorted.7z, the big Wii leak that happened in May 2020]
• bbgames.7z, the leak that led to the discovery of Luigi in SM64]

Lavacakessss (talk) 23:15, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Irrefutable proof that Zammis Clark was behind the leaks

In Early 2018, while Zammis is said to still have had access to Nintendo's servers according to various articles, he took part in a competition to get a high score in some sort of pokemon challenge romhack. He got first place and was able to leave a message. Look to 0:20 of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro9sH2qHyD8 "Riley" is one of Zammis's aliases. In his message he links to one of his social media accounts that you can verify belongs to him with a few searches. At the end of his message he leaves a "PRNG seed" which is actually a hash of the zip file containing the Pokemon gen 1 source code. This video and that message came out two whole years before any of this leaked to the public. 2601:409:200:1A0C:42B:94A9:A533:61E9 (talk) 22:19, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

That's original research as well as BLP violation. We can't use that at all. --Masem (t) 00:25, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Zammis

Who is this 'Zammis Clark' figure, and how is he related to this whole situation? Furthermore, how was this leak conducted? WA Stokins (talk) 16:39, 13 September 2023 (UTC)