Arion Kurtaj, an 18-year-old teenage hacker, accused of being part of the international group Lapsus$ and author of the massive content leaks of the “GTA VI” video game series, was sentenced to life in prison in a psychiatric hospital. The young man, who is autistic, is a key member of the criminal organization that attacked large technology corporations such as Uber, Nvidia, and Rockstar Games and cost them economic losses of close to 10 million dollars.
In September 2022, Kurtaj, being a minor, entered the internal communications system and managed to obtain more than 90 videos of the GTA VI video game, thereby blackmailing Rockstar Games, the video game developer. This attack resulted in millions of dollars in losses and hours of work.
According to the latest investigations in the United Kingdom, the teenager did not act alone but rather had the company of another 17-year-old young man, whose identity has not been revealed. One of his first criminal acts took place in July 2021. The two hacked the servers of telecommunications companies BT and EE for which they demanded $4 million. Although they did not manage to get the money, they were able to steal cryptocurrencies from some of the members valued at more than 100 billion dollars.
Their second crime was against NVIDIA, a software company that designs graphics processing units, from which they stole and leaked confidential company data. To achieve their goal, the hackers hired someone to deceive senior managers, posing as an employee. They also sent spam to the phones of real workers to obtain their access credentials.
https://youtu.be/NMWkEt_KF6g?si=3RIYIUfRZXLg26v7
The judge handling the case against the hacker imposed this sentence based on the psychiatric reports to which he was subjected, in which they assured that he was by no means remorseful, but rather the opposite. The hacker would have “continued to express his intention to return to cybercrime as soon as possible. He is very motivated,” expressed these reports, which did not consider the hacker suitable for his reintegration.
This story was written in Spanish by Daniel Matute in Cultura Colectiva.