GTA 6 Hacker Sentenced to Life

Imagine being 18, and hacking big tech giants one after another. Nvidia, Uber, and then when your computer was confiscated, you hacked Rockstar Games on an Amazon Firestick, causing millions of dollars in damages. Arion Kurtaj from Oxford did all that in a hotel with said Firestick, his cellphone, and a hotel TV. Then posted at least 90 clips of GTA 6 footage and source code online as “TeaPotUberHacker”.

Kurtaj was recently sentenced indefinitely to be supervised in a hospital until he can be deemed no longer a threat to the public. Doctors have said that he has “continued to express the intent to return to cybercrime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated.” According to the BBC, after the GTA 6 hack he “broke into the company’s internal Slack messaging system to declare “if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram within 24 hours I will start releasing the source code”.

Kurtaj is part of the hacker group, Lapsus$. Most of the said members are around 17 to 18 and have caused over $10m of damage to GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games alone. Lapsus$ was also found to be responsible for earlier hacks on Nvidia and Uber. Both of these were reported to be breached due to scamming employees into giving them their login information.

Kurtaj remains under an indefinite hospital order until he can be found no longer a danger to society. How long that will take, depends on how well Kurtaj can change and if a doctor can sign off on him. As for his target at Rockstar Games. GTA 6’s trailer was released to over 155m views in just two weeks. This was also released early after someone leaked the trailer ahead of time. It seems no matter what happens to this game, GTA 6 looks to be the most hyped-up game for the next few years.