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A man from Indiana has pleaded guilty for his role in a hacking ring that targeted major games developers. Austin Alcala, 19, from the town of McCordsville, admitted guilt (PDF) to charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and criminal copyright infringement. Alcala will be sentenced on a July 29 hearing, where he could face as much as five years in prison. The teenager was part of a group of hackers who sought to steal data from game studios between the Spring of 2012 and April 2014. The group targeted companies including Microsoft, Valve and Epic games, where they broke into corporate networks and pilfered internal documents, source code and unreleased games. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Alcala worked with the other members of the group to infiltrate systems owned by Microsoft in order to steal software and internal documents discussing the then-unreleased Xbox One console and Xbox Live online gaming service. He was also said to be involved in heists targeting the FIFA, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Gears of War franchises. In one instance, the DOJ alleges Alcala stole 11,266 log-in credentials from an unnamed company and distributed them to other members of the group. The DOJ estimates that the business data, code and games the group pilfered from their targets added up to between $100m and $200m. No customer information was believed to have been stolen. Alcala's conviction was the fourth related to the games hacking group. The FBI has already won convictions against Sanadodeh Nesheiwat of New Jersey, David Pokora of Ontario, Canada and Nathan Leroux of Maryland. Nesheiwat and Pokora are scheduled to be sentenced later this month, Leroux will be sentenced in May. The DOJ said that the FBI is still investigating the case and working with law enforcement agencies in Canada and Australia to hunt down other members of the international group. Source

A new report prepared by the United States Department of Justice’s internal watchdog has revealed that two major federal law enforcement agencies have spent millions of dollars on 23 drones that for some reason, are not operational. The report, which was published on Wednesday by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General, also concludes that the FBI is the “only DOJ component that operationally deploys its own UAS,” using the government acronym for Unmanned Aerial System, or drone. The DOJ OIG report comes less than three months after the Department of Homeland Security OIG concluded that after eight years, the drone program run by Customs and Border Protection was ineffective. The DOJ report also includes a few other new details, including confirmation of the 2013 assertion by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller that the agency uses drones “very seldom.” The DOJ OIG found that the FBI has only used its drones for 13 cases between 2004 and 2013. When it did fly those missions, however, the agency also determined that it apparently did not need a warrant to conduct aerial surveillance. As was first noted by Emptywheel, a government and national security blog, the DOJ OIG report also states that the FBI spent $3 million on 34 drones “and associated control stations.” But for some reason, only half of those drones are considered operational, suggesting that half of the money has effectively been wasted. Another problem is that the FBI apparently only has two drone pilots at the moment, who have to be physically shuttled around the country when a drone operation is in use. Worse still, it has been hard to train more, as the report states: Drones join the Navy? The second largest agency within the DOJ to use drones was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which spent a total of $600,000 on six drones and related equipment, but they too were “unsuitable" for unspecified reasons. As the DOJ OIG notes: Apparently just a week after the ATF gave up its six drones, it then went out and bought five more for $15,000. Then after realizing it needed a Certificate of Authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration in order to fly them, they were grounded. Source