A group of hackers snuffling around for games have been arrested and are lucky not to be charged as terrorists or spies.

Four men (two Americans, a Canadian and an Australian) have been charged with hacking into Microsoft and U.S. Army networks to steal source code for a U.S. Army AH-64 helicopter flight simulator. The simulator was designed to run on the Xbox and was part of a deal between Microsoft and the US Army and involved classified material.

The value of the stolen items was put at $100 million and it is believed that the four just intended to flog the source code on the black market to counterfeiters rather than Chinese spooks. Chinese firms and government organizations are willing to buy military related software in the hope that it can tell them about the real hardware behind it.

In this case, the four might have bitten off more than they can chew. It is surprisingly close to the plot of the 1983 movie WarGames.