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18-year old Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, UK, was a key member of the international hacking gang Lapsus$, which, among several cases of cyber crime against tech giants, has been behind the recent leak of the Grand Theft Auto VI video clips, ahead of the official trailer by Rockstar Games. Over the years, Lapsus$ hit big tech companies, including Rockstar Games, NVIDIA, and Uber, with their exploits assessed to have caused these companies about $10 million in losses. In an interesting twist to the case, the Kurtaj was deemed by doctors unfit to stand trial as he is severely autistic, and so the jury in the case was asked to determine only whether or not he committed the acts of cyber crime, and not if he did so with criminal intent.
The judge hearing the case said Kurtaj's skills and desire to commit cyber crime meant he remained a high risk to the public. While on bail from his previous arrest for hacking NVIDIA and UK telecommunication giants EE and BT, and in police protection in a hotel, Kurtaj pulled off his most daring hack of breaching Rockstar Games, using only an Amazon Firestick, his hotel's TV, and a mobile phone. He stole 90 clips of unreleased footage from gameplay of Grand Theft Auto VI. He also broke into Rockstar's internal Slack channel, threatening to leak the game's source code if the studio didn't contact him within 24 hours. He was immediately re-arrested and in lock-up until his trial. Rockstar Games told the court that it cost the company $5 million to recover from the hack, in staff billable hours.
Another Lapsus$ hacker from the UK, who is 17 and hence cannot be named, was found guilty in the same trial and sentence to an 18-month long youth rehabilitation order, including intense supervision and a ban from using VPNs. This individual worked with Kurtaj and other Lapsus$ members to hack NVIDIA, EE, and BT, to steal data and demanding ransoms of $4 million in crypto currency, which were not paid. Kurtaj is now sentenced to life in hospital, a politically correct term used to mean that he is institutionalized, until Doctors deem him no longer a danger.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
The judge hearing the case said Kurtaj's skills and desire to commit cyber crime meant he remained a high risk to the public. While on bail from his previous arrest for hacking NVIDIA and UK telecommunication giants EE and BT, and in police protection in a hotel, Kurtaj pulled off his most daring hack of breaching Rockstar Games, using only an Amazon Firestick, his hotel's TV, and a mobile phone. He stole 90 clips of unreleased footage from gameplay of Grand Theft Auto VI. He also broke into Rockstar's internal Slack channel, threatening to leak the game's source code if the studio didn't contact him within 24 hours. He was immediately re-arrested and in lock-up until his trial. Rockstar Games told the court that it cost the company $5 million to recover from the hack, in staff billable hours.
Another Lapsus$ hacker from the UK, who is 17 and hence cannot be named, was found guilty in the same trial and sentence to an 18-month long youth rehabilitation order, including intense supervision and a ban from using VPNs. This individual worked with Kurtaj and other Lapsus$ members to hack NVIDIA, EE, and BT, to steal data and demanding ransoms of $4 million in crypto currency, which were not paid. Kurtaj is now sentenced to life in hospital, a politically correct term used to mean that he is institutionalized, until Doctors deem him no longer a danger.
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
