The hacker who leaked information about the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation to Kotaku before either console was officially announced and who was subsequently raided by the police is now vowing to disseminate 2 Terabytes of gaming code and information, should he be arrested.
SuperDaE, an Australian citizen named Dylan, first publicized this threat on our sister site Gizmodo. He told that outlet that he expects to be arrested on Monday and that, if he's not at his computer by 8pm Monday evening in Perth, Australia (8am ET), a Tweet will automatically be sent from his account that will make all of the gaming info he's hacked from the world's top video game companies public.
The FTP, whose files are not yet accesible, supposedly contains material grabbed by SuperDaE's hacks into Gears of War and Unreal Engine developer Epic, World of Warcraft studio Blizzard, Sleeping Dogs dev house United Front Games and the now-shuttered publisher THQ, among others.
The FTP also apparently contains software development kits for the PS4, Xbox One and Wii U as well as possible old code for unreleased games such as Company of Heroes 2 and WWE 14. The Epic directory includes folders for Unreal Engine 4 and UE4 projects called Fortnite (an announced game), Kilo, Lima and Orion.
We're not able to verify the authenticity of any of these files, though SuperDaE had shared accurate development documentation with Kotaku for the then code-named Orbis (PS4) and Durango (Xbox One) near the start of the year. At the time, we were unclear where or how SuperDaE had obtained such information and were under the impression, after reporting out the story of SuperDaE's hacking and mid-February police raid, that he'd not made any subsequent hacks.
The FTP, we believe, contains the data he'd obtained from his pre-raid hacks.
"It only leaks if I get arrested," SuperDaE told Kotaku today. Asked why he expected to be arrested, he said, "I'm not expecting anything. I'm just making a political statement."
SuperDaE has maintained that he only hacks out of curiosity and doesn't distribute game code to torrents or engage in piracy.
He also says that the raid of his home, which resulted in the seizure of his computers and gaming hardware, was never followed up with any charges. He believes that the FBI played a hand in the raid, though we've never been able to confirm that. Last December, the FBI did raid the home of one of his hacker colleagues in New Jersey.
SuperDaE believes he was raided at the behest of Microsoft, whose chief of digital security had flown to Australia to meet with SuperDaE late last year.
In February, Microsoft denied triggering the raid. "Microsoft did not initiate this FBI investigation with this individual, as has been asserted in some of the articles in the media," a company spokesperson had told Kotaku. "We take security very seriously and have no evidence of any compromise of our corporate network. We have no further comment on this matter."
Asked what political statement he was trying to make, SuperDaE said today: "The U.S. works on Capitalism. The government isn't Microsoft's personal servant."
Should the FTP's data be as real as he says it is and leak, it wouldn't just be Microsoft that would be affected. As for whether the release of unreleased game code would be fair to those who made the games—companies that aren't Microsoft—he replied: "It isn't fair, but that's how Capitalism works. They're playing a dirty game. It's like a game of poker."
UPDATE - SuperDaE has since claimed to have been granted bail, tweeting:
To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo