Rockstar Games’ GTA 6 is one of the most highly anticipated games that players have been waiting for for over a decade and the GTA community was shocked back in September 2022 when a hacker leaked source code and several development footage of then unannounced game.
This was one of the biggest leaks ever seen in the gaming industry and it was later confirmed by Rockstar that the footage was genuine. The hacker behind the leak, Arion Kurtaj from Oxford has now been sentenced to indefinite life in a hospital prison.
Infamous Rockstar Games’ GTA 6 Leak Hacker Sentenced to Life
Arion Kurtaj, the 18-year-old British teenager hacked Rockstar Games and leaked the source code and 90 in-development video footage of GTA6 on GTAForums under the username TeaPotUberHacker. The leaked videos all went viral soon as news was scarce regarding the game and it showed characters, locations, and much more details. Kurtaj was soon arrested as the evidence pointed towards him and he has now been handed a life sentence in hospital prison.
According to the BBC, Arion Kurtaj is autistic and is connected to the international hacker group Lapsus$ which has hacked into several big tech organizations including Uber, Nvidia and Kurtaj is a key member of the group. The hearing was at the Guildford Crown Court and the judge ruled Kurtaj “remains a high risk to the public through his skills and motivation” to commit cybercrimes.
He will remain at the hospital prison for life “unless doctors deem him no longer a danger.” Kurtaj heard the ruling via a voice call from the Feltham Youth Prison. The court was told during the hearing that Kurtaj has been violent in custody with dozens of reports of injury or property damage and the doctor ruled him unfit to stand trial due to his severe autism with the jury determining if he did or did not commit the crime and if he did it if it was with criminal intent.
It was revealed that Kurtaj has expressed “continued intent to return to cyber-crime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated.” It was also told to the jury that while he was out on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and was under police protection at a Travelodge hotel and that’s when he hacked into Rockstar. Although his laptop was taken when he was in custody, he carried out the hacking using an Amazon Firestick, a hotel TV, and a mobile phone.
That’s not all as Kurtaj also broke into Rockstar’s Slack system and Confluence wiki, and declared that if the company does not contact him in 24 hours on Telegram he will start releasing the source code of the game and that was when he posted the source code and video footage on GTAForums with a link to a RAR archive, leading to his arrest and detention.
Kurtaj’s defense argued that the successful launch of Grand Theft Auto 6‘s first trailer shows that the leak did not harm the developer and this should be taken into consideration in sentencing. However, the judge said that there have been “real victims and real harm” from his hacks on other companies and individuals that he attacked with the hacker group Lapsus$.
Rockstar released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto6 earlier this month and it took the community by story with over 128 million views in just 4 days and grossed over 150 million views becoming the first trailer to achieve the feat. However, Rockstar stated that the hack cost the company more than $5 million in recovery and “thousands of hours of staff time.”
An accomplice of Kurtaj, a 17-year-old who can not be named because of legal reasons has also been found guilty in the trailer and is sentenced to 18 months of Youth Rehabilitation Order with three months of intense supervision and is not allowed to use VPNs. He was also found guilty of stalking two young women with the judge describing it as an “unpleasant and frightening pattern of stalking and harassment.” Kurtaj and the 17-year-old are the first members of Lapsus$ to have been convicted and the other members of the group remain on the loose.
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