Video Game Piracy Group Xecutor’s Alleged Leaders Arrested in US

The US Department of Justice has arrested two alleged leaders of a video-game piracy group called Team Xecuter, a report in ThreatPost says. The two fugitives arrested are Max Louran (48), a French national and Gary Bowser (51), a Canadian national. The two allegedly led the criminal enterprise’s efforts to hack gaming consoles so they could be used to play pirated copies of video games. The Department of Justice has also charged a third person Yuannin Chen (35), a Chinese nation, who is also a member of Team Xecuter, the report said.

Game developers and console manufacturers have many measures in place that prevent piracy on major consoles. Game developers govern the use of major consoles to play copyrighted video-games with end-user licensing agreements, which prevent piracy, modifying or selling the software. Further, console manufacturers, along with developers implement various other technical measures like cartridge design, cryptographic keys, and other such steps to prevent the use of unauthorised firmware that could be used to play pirated games. Team Xecuter, which says it has been around since 2001 had bypassed these measure by developing and selling illegal devices that could circumvent these measures. One such example is a USB device that the group started selling in 2018 called the SX Pro. The SX Pro allows Nintendo Switch console to run pirated games.