Tanmay Jha
A London Court jury found an 18-year-old British hacker executed high-profile cyberattacks on major tech firms.
The Southwark Crown Court jury found Arion Kurtaj guilty on 12 counts, including blackmail, fraud, and several violations of the UK’s Computer Misuse Act.
He was a key member of an international cyber-crime gang, Lapsus$ which broke the security of Uber, Nvidia, and perhaps most infamously Rockstar Games.
Read the article to know more about the Lapsus$ group and the hacking spree of Kurtaj.
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The Teenage Hacker’s Connection With Lapsus$
The teen Arion Kurtaj, who hacked into various tech companies and leaked dozens of videos related to the next installment of Grand Theft Auto, was a member of the hacker group Lapsus$.
Lapsus$ is a group based out of the U.K., has a dangerous reputation, and is known for hacking into secure systems and using private information to blackmail large companies. Known techniques utilized by the group include both social engineering, in which a hacker tricks a person into allowing them access to a system, and more complex computer-based attacks.
Lapsus$ was able to get on the radar of the FBI here in the U.S. thanks to “the theft and dissemination of proprietary data that they claim to have illegally obtained.” Kurtaj specifically succeeded in becoming one of the group’s most prominent members as of July 2021.
The very first time, the 16-year-old assisted the group in acquiring user information from numerous customers of British telecommunications companies EE, BT, and Orange. The hacker then demanded $4 million in U.S. currency in exchange for keeping the information confidential. He stole £100,000 from five of these customers before his arrest in January 2022.
And now, this is his third hacking spree with a cyberattack on Rockstar Games.
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Kurtaj released gameplay videos of the not-yet-released Grand Theft Auto VI
Kurtaj was arrested several times within the past two years but continued to effectuate cyberattacks on several companies by using social engineering and SIM-swapping techniques.
After a second arrest in March 2022, Kurtaj was caught “caught red-handed” in a hotel in Oxfordshire. He was closely monitored by authorities as a condition of his bail and was banned from accessing the internet. But that was not enough to prevent him from continuing his hacks.
According to the BBC, prosecutors say that he brought an Amazon Fire Stick which allows him to connect to cloud computing services with a newly purchased smartphone, keyboard, and mouse.
During that time, Kurtaj released videos showcasing the gameplay of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto VI after threatening its developers, Rockstar Games.
Kurtaj is detained in custody, while the 17-year-old accused individual remains on bail.
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Source: The Verge
