A teenager behind the notorious hack which saw footage of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto VI game leaked online has been detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.
Arion Kurtaj, 18, a “key player” in the Lapsus$ group, carried out a hacking spree against major tech firms including Rockstar Games, the developer of the hugely successful video game franchise.
He stole codes and footage of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto VI, the long-awaited sequel which is due to hit the shelves next year more than a decade after the last instalment.
Kurtaj published some of the stolen footage on online forums and blackmailed developer Rockstar, threatening to release the source code unless they contacted him in September last year.
Judge Patricia Lees said the “hacking resulted in a huge loss of marketing opportunities for Rockstar which was unquantifiable” and cost the firm $1.5m (around £1.2m) in external help alone, along with thousands of hours of work by employees.
Kurtaj also targeted broadband provider BT and mobile operator EE, software company Nvidia and Uber – making multi-million dollar demands – over a 14-month period between July 2021 and September last year while he was aged 16 and 17.
Psychiatrists had assessed Kurtaj, who is autistic, as unfit to enter pleas to charges or stand trial.
But a jury found he had carried out the acts alleged against him, which amounted to 12 offences – including six counts of carrying out an unauthorised act to impair the operation of a computer, three counts of blackmail, two fraud offences, and of failing to comply with a section 49 notice to disclose a key when he did not give up the password to his mobile phone when asked to by police – following a two-month case.
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The judge ordered that he should be…
