Arion Kurtaj, an 18-year-old hacker responsible for leaking 90 “GTA VI” videos in 2022, has been sentenced to serve a prison-hospital sentence for an indefinite period.The hacker, a member of the Lapsus$ group, who has hacked several well-known companies including Uber, will remain there until he no longer presents a risk of recurrence.The stolen images revealed many elements about Rockstar Games’ future hit, since confirmed by the release of the first trailer on December 5.
He had leaked dozens of stolen “GTA VI” videos. Arion Kurtaj, a hacker known under the pseudonym “AK”, was sentenced on Thursday December 21 to hospital prison for an indefinite period, reports the BBC. Originally from Oxford and suffering from autism, the 18-year-old was then a “key member” of a group called Lapsus$, which hacked Microsoft, Uber and Nvidia. Following this latest intrusion, he was arrested by the London police, before being released on bail. Placed under protection for security reasons, after being the victim of doxing – a practice aimed at revealing information about an individual’s identity – “AK” was placed under house arrest, in a hotel, with a ban on connecting to the Internet.
It was at the same time that he broke into Rockstar’s servers. Deprived of a computer, he used a smartphone, a keyboard, a mouse and an Amazon Fire Stick, connected to the television in his room, to break into the New York publisher’s system. On September 18, 2022, the Take-Two Interactive subsidiary was the victim of a major leak, one of the largest in the history of video games. The hacker, hidden under the username “TeaPotUberHacker”, posted the source code of the future “Grand Theft Auto” on a forum. He also broadcast 90 extracts from the new episode of the successful license.
He revealed around fifty minutes of stolen images from an old test version, called “alpha”. These showed elements of the studio’s future hit with the star-studded “R”, previously never unknown to the general public. We could notably discover the two main protagonists, the future Lucia and Jason, a modern version of Bonnie and Clyde, and different locations or settings which suggested a return of the saga to “Vice City”, a fictional city inspired by Miami already explored in 2022.
At the material time, the leak (leaked, in English) massive had been described as “nightmare” for the studio by Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, one of the most respected in the video game world. A few days later, Arion Kurtaj was arrested, suspected by the British police, supported by the FBI, of being responsible for the intrusion at Rockstar.
A leak that cost Rockstar millions
Unfit to stand trial, due to his acute autism, he was sentenced to live in a prison hospital until he was no longer considered a threat. A mental health assessment, used as part of the sentencing hearing, found that the young hacker “continued to express his intention to return to cybercrime as soon as possible”calling it “very motivated”. Separately, the court heard that Arion Kurtaj had been violent during his detention and there were dozens of reports of injuries or property damage.
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His defense argued that the success of the first trailer, released on December 5, 2023, indicated that his action had not caused serious harm to the developer. An argument which was not taken into account by the judge, who mentioned real victims and real damage caused by his other multiple hacks on individuals and companies that he had attacked with Lapsus$. In court, Rockstar Games claimed that the leak, of which it was the victim, had cost it $5 million and thousands of hours of work for its teams. A leak which fortunately did not delay the development of “GTA VI”.