Teenage Hackers Who Leaked ‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ Details Convicted in UK

A London jury has discovered two youngsters answerable for quite a few high-profile hacks as members of the Lapsus$ group, which carried out numerous assaults on Grand Theft Auto recreation writer Rockstar Video games, tech big Nvidia, journey sharing service Uber, and British telecommunications firm EE, amongst others.

Each 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj and a 17-year-old male—who was not recognized because of his age—have been convicted in court docket Wednesday, Bloomberg experiences. Kurtaj was blamed for hacking Rockstar Video games’ servers in 2022 and leaking confidential info to the general public in regards to the upcoming recreation, Grand Theft Auto 6.

In 2022, Kurtaj illegally retrieved delicate information and video from Grand Theft Auto 6 from the corporate and posted a message in Rockstar Video games’ Slack group stating, “I’m not a Rockstar worker, I’m an attacker.” 

Kurtaj instructed Rockstar that he had acquired all of Grand Theft Auto 6’s information and gave the agency an ultimatum, demanding that it contact him over Telegram or he would launch the stolen information. Over 90 video clips and pictures of Grand Theft Auto 6 have been then printed on a web based discussion board, and Rockstar Video games confirmed the authenticity of the early footage.

The leaked content material prompt that Grand Theft Auto 6 would have the franchise’s first-ever feminine protagonist, and be set within the Miami-inspired Vice Metropolis. The sport can have a Latina girl and a white man as its two playable protagonists, Bloomberg reported. The as-yet-unrevealed recreation is the follow-up to 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the vital profitable video games of all time with over 185 million copies bought thus far.

The London jury discovered Kurtaj at fault for all 12 expenses, Reuters reported, together with six expenses below Britain’s Laptop Misuse Act in addition to three counts of blackmail and two counts of fraud.

However Kurtaj, who’s an autistic individual, didn’t seem in court docket because of a psychiatric analysis that concluded he was unfit to face for trial, the BBC reported. Subsequently, the court docket didn’t announce a “responsible” verdict, however as an alternative discovered him legally answerable for the crimes.

The teenager duo have been additionally accused of hacking Nvidia collectively, and the unnamed 17-year-old was convicted for hacking Nvidia and committing fraud and blackmail after he stole roughly 1 terabyte of information from the tech {hardware} big and held it for ransom.

The 17-year-old, whom the BBC reported can also be an autistic individual, was discovered responsible of 1 rely below the Laptop Misuse Act, one rely of fraud, and one rely of blackmail for the Nvidia hack. He was discovered not responsible for one rely of blackmail and one other below the Laptop Misuse Act, because it pertains to allegations that he had hacked EE guardian firm BT.

The 2 younger males labored as “key gamers” within the Lapsus$ group, which is believed to be a world group of cyberattackers that, whereas loosely organized, possessed a deft potential to shortly hack into high-profile tech and gaming corporations. 

Lapsus$ members would typically demand ransoms, ship mass textual content messages with their calls for, take over victims’ computer systems and delete information in entrance of them, and publish numerous photographs “to show their entry,” in line with a U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) report into the group’s exercise from 2021 to 2022. 

Whereas CISA known as Lapsus$ “distinctive for its effectiveness, velocity, creativity, and boldness,” it additionally famous that “in some instances, assaults appeared to replicate a ‘smash-and-grab’ method that appeared to prioritize velocity over technique and typically missed alternatives to extract higher-value information.”