Teenager involved with hack which led to GTA 6 leak, court finds

techradar.com:

An 18-year-old from Oxford, England, has been found to be part of a Lapsus$ group hacking spree by a court. The series of attacks affected a number of major companies, including Rockstar Games, which led to an enormous amount of leaked information about GTA 6appearing online in September 2022.

As reported by the BBC, Arion Kurtaj was previously deemed not fit to stand trial by psychiatrists, so he did not appear in court. A 17-year-old was convicted for his involvement in Lapsus$ activities, but cannot be named due to his age. The Independent reports that the two were described as “key players” in the Lapsus$ group by the prosecution.

The court was told that Kurtaj and the 17-year-old met online and began hacking together in July 2021, with Kurtaj allegedly hacking the data files and servers of mobile network and internet providers, EE and BT (with the help of associates), leading to them being arrested in January 2022 — they were later released under investigation. After that, the court heard that the pair hacked into Nvidia in February 2022, released sensitive information online, and then demanded a ransom payment to stop them from revealing more. They were arrested on March 31, 2022, but, shortly before, Kurtaj was reportedly doxxed by a group of rival hackers, and he was moved to a hotel for his own safety while under strict bail conditions.

However, prosecutors said Kurtaj was “caught red handed” when police searched his hotel room and found an Amazon Fire Stick, which allowed him to connect to cloud computing services with a new phone, and a keyboard and mouse. Reportedly, the court heard that Kurtaj had helped attack Rockstar Games (as well as Revolut and Uber) and that during the attack on the GTA developer, he had