Arion Kurtaj, the 18-year-old hacker who shook Rockstar Games last year, received an indefinite sentence in a hospital.
As a reminder, this was part of the Lapsus$ group, which was notably responsible for attacks against Uber and NVIDIA. It is notably to Arion, one of its most important members, that we owe the massive leak of a very early version of Grand Theft Auto 6 Last year. He was quickly found by the British police, and the courts have just ruled on his particular case, because he suffers from autism.
Maximum search index
On September 18, 2022, the giant Rockstar Games was struck to the heart, as numerous clips showed the highly anticipated GTA 6, their most ambitious project to date, in a fairly embryonic form, as well as its code. This truly massive leak cost the studio millions of dollars and was the work of one person: Arion Kurtaj, a young man suffering from autism and member of the small hacker group Lapsus$.
Coming from Oxford, he carried out his misdeed from an Amazon Fire TV in a hotel room. Suffice to say that the search index against him was at its maximum, and he was finally arrested five days after the escape, on September 23.
It is only today that the courts handed down their verdict in this case. We learn via a new report from the BBC that Arion will be kept in a hospital indefinitely, given his mental disorder.
A particular sentence for a particular case
In his defense, it was mentioned that the leak perpetrated by Arion and his fellow hackers “ did not cause serious harm to developers “. However, we know that this is unfortunately the case. Another argument put forward to reduce this sentence: the enormous success of the leak of the first and long-awaited trailer for GTA 6this time carried out by other pirates.
Arion, however, openly indicated that he would continue his illicit activities once he regained his freedom. He will therefore be moved to a secure hospital until further notice (for life if necessary). The sentence was supplemented by an order to rehabilitate the young man for a period of 18 months including “ permanent supervision and deprivation of access to online VPNs “.
So for now this is a closed case. However, attacks of this type against the video game industry continue to multiply. The most recent case being the ransomware attack against Insomniac Games. This had terrible consequences, leaking the studio’s future projects, and even confidential information concerning PlayStation more broadly.
Sony’s gaming branch recently announced plans to make new layoffs, notably at Insomniac Games. A form of punishment or a pressing need to save money? Either way, the people working on creating the video games we love have been going through a very dark time lately…
Source : BBC
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