We Learned More About Hacker Attack That Led to the Huge GTA 6 Leak

Source: Rockstar Games.

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Last year's leak of GTA VI was one of the most famous in the history of the game industry. The hacker behind that attack did not personally stand trial after an opinion from psychiatrists, but new information about the hacking of Rockstar Games' servers has hit the web (via BBC).

First hacks

The theft of the GTA VI code is by no means the hacker's first offense. Source: Rockstar Games.

As we wrote in July, Arion Kurtaj (18 yrs.) was a member of the Lapsus$ hacking group and stealing the data of GTA 6 is by no means his first offense.

1. Much earlier (in 2021), he hacked into the servers of telecommunications company BT and its member EE Limited, demanding a $4 million ransom and eventually stealing $100 million in cryptocurrency (via BBC).
2. In January 2022. Kurtaj and an unnamed teenager (his main associate) were arrested, but released pending investigation. This nevertheless did not stop the British youth who hacked into Nvidia's servers in the same year, including sending mass messages to Nvidia employees asking them to grant access in the middle of the night.

Doxxing and hotel hacking with the help of Amazon

Following this latest hack, Kurtaj and his accomplice were arrested in March 2022. However, in the meantime, the young man's data had leaked online, including his home address. This was thought to be the result of a rivalry with another group of hackers - it was revenge for ruining a certain website and gaining access to its users' data

1. As a result Kurtaj was transferred to a Travelodge hotel with a ban on Internet use and other restrictions. However, as we can see from the Rockstar incident, this did not stop the Briton.
2. When London police raided Kurtaj's room after the GTA 6 leak, they caught him red-handed. The hacker used an Amazon Fire Stick remote control to connect to the network using a smartphone via cloud services. He also had a keyboard and a mouse, and that was enough for him to hack into the servers of not only Rockstar Games, but also Uber and Revolut.

Youthful cockiness

Before he could be arrested again, Kurtaj wrote on Rockstar's Slack app channel demanding to be contacted within 24 hours, threatening to release the source code of GTA 6. Kevin Barry, the lead accuser, was also said to have revealed that the hacker and his associate frequently left abusive messages on the affected companies' servers.

The group was also said to behave impulsively, without integrity or a plan - which is rather unsurprising, since Lapsus consisted mainly of teenagers or young men. Their discussions on Telegram (made available by the aforementioned rivals) indicated that the hackers' motivations ranged from blackmail to the desire to gain notoriety to entertainment.

It is unclear how much the group gained from the hacks. Kurtaj's accomplice denied giving access to his cryptocurrency wallet. A final verdict on the two hackers will be issued at a later date.