2024 Game Freak Breach

The 2024 Game Freak Breach (also known as the "Freakleak", the "Teraleak" and the "Gigafreak") was a data breach of internal Game Freak files carried out by an anonymous user known as GameFreakOUT.

Screenshots of the attacker logged into an employee's account on the Nintendo Developer Portal show an announcement from July 31st 2024, meaning that the attackers had access to the internal servers and employee data in August 2024. It is rumored that 1 or more terabytes of internal files were exfiltrated, ranging from concept art, lore documents and semi-official fan-fictions written by Game Freak employees to full SVN source code repositories of Pokémon games.

Archives of what was exfiltrated are still being leaked to the public on the daily. Unlike the Zammis Clark Breach, where the data came into the hands of the public on 4chan, it was instead sent on a public Discord server, but the leaker later switched to sending the data in a private server.

Timeline of releases

October 2024 - Present

2024, October 12

A user by the name of GameFreakOUT (gamefreakout) joins the Discord server.

Around 6:32 PM GMT, the account posted 2 screenshots of them being logged into a Game Freak employee's account on the Nintendo Developer Portal. The first one was the Account Info page, and the second was a list of products that Game Freak published for the Nintendo Switch line of systems.

At the same time, gsmirror.tar.gz was uploaded to gofile.io and sent a few minutes later to the Discord server. The archive contains the complete source code to Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, including source history.

At 7:26 PM, BW2_builds.7z was uploaded to gofile.io and sent to the Discord server. Contains a few Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 builds with source code patches.

At 7:39 PM, turtleproject.7z was uploaded to gofile.io and sent to the Discord. Contains source code to Pokémon Bank as latest as May 10 2024.

A few minutes later, a list of the codenames for every Pokémon-related Game Freak game was sent.

Between the last archive and the next archive, 3 archives were sent, being オレ-selected2.zip, rom-selected.zip and Q36H7N_B.zip. They contain builds and source code to older (Famicon, SFC, and DS) non-Pokémon related Game Freak projects.

At 8:21 PM, plmirror.tar.gz was uploaded to gofile.io and sent to the Discord. Contains the source code to Pokémon Platinum, with source history.

At 8:23 PM, momiji_git_program.zip was uploaded to gofile.io and sent to the Discord. The archive was passworded, but the password was found to be J89eeu4Lp. Contains the source code to Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

It seems like between the upload of those last 2 files, discussion was moved to a more private Discord server while the old messages were purged.

At 9:48 PM, wbmirror.tar.gz was uploaded to gofile.io and sent to the Discord. Contains the source code to Pokémon Black and White, with source history.

2024, October 13

todo