Spanish Man Jailed over Leaked Wii User Data

Wonder what it means by "some".

Black hats often feel, rightly or wrongly, that if the owner of an unsecured site does not respond to their warnings, the best way to put pressure on them is to go public.

The claim that the man only revealed some of the info he had, instead of all of it, could mean that he was trying to show the seriousness of the vuln without hurting anybody -- or it could mean he was attempting to extort hush money from Nintendo and was showing what he had to prove he was serious.  The story doesn't have a lot of details, though the claim that he was planning on contacting the authorities with the information suggests he had good intentions.

What data he leaked is unclear.  I suppose there are ways to leak confidential data that prove you have it but don't reveal what it is -- you could post a one-way hash, or post, say, a customer's initials and a few digits of his credit card or SSN, something along those lines.  The article says he was planning on releasing the full contents of the DB, though, which if true is obviously a very bad thing and, as you say, not a very effective way to protect people's privacy.

Bottom line, I hope Nintendo (or whoever was housing the info) gets their security fixed so nobody else gets ahold of customer data.  And I hope the guy in question gets whatever's coming to him -- if he was trying to extort money, he deserves prison; if he really intended to leak the entire database, he deserves a stiff fine.  But if he really only leaked harmless bits and pieces to try and get Nintendo to take the threat seriously, then I think he should only get a slap on the wrist.