The 18-year-old Lapsus$ hacker who played a critical role in leaking Grand Theft Auto VI footage has been sentenced to life inside a hospital prison, according to a report from the BBC. A British judge ruled on Thursday that Arion Kurtaj is a high risk to the public because he still wants to commit cybercrimes.
In August, a London jury found that Kurtaj carried out cyberattacks against GTA VI developer Rockstar Games and other companies, including Uber and Nvidia. However, since Kurtaj has autism and was deemed unfit to stand trial, the jury was asked to determine whether he committed the acts in question, not whether he did so with criminal intent.
You can't tell me he'd have gotten in as much trouble if he had robbed any one of us. He made a corporation look dumb, that's why they went so heavy on him
One of the reasons he's in forced medical detention is because one of the things he threatened to do was steal and leak user data. So in a way, he actually is in trouble for trying to do the same to one of us
You can’t tell me he’d have gotten in as much trouble if he had robbed any one of us.
Do any one of us have multi-million dollar IPs that were breached? The scale is 100% the issue here, he's caused millions in damages, far more than if he were to have stolen from any Joe Schmoe.
He has a disability/issues that he was sentenced to a hospital for, he can be released if he is deemed not a danger to himself or others, he was also physically violent apparently and they are giving him treatment in a secure setting. I don't know if the place he is going is good or anything about the treatment but it's not exactly a prison life sentence.
Hacking spree one Jurors heard that the unnamed teenager started hacking with Kurtaj in July 2021 having met online. Kurtaj aided by Lapsus$ associates, hacked the servers and data files of telecoms company BT and EE, the mobile operator, before demanding a $4m (£3.1m) ransom on 1 August 2021.
Hacking spree two That did not deter the duo who continued hacking with Lapsus$ and successfully breached Nvidia, a Silicon Valley tech giant that makes chips for artificial intelligence chatbots, in February 2022. They stole and leaked sensitive and valuable data and demanded a ransom payment to stop them releasing more.
**Hacking spree three **Prosecutors say he was “caught red handed” when City of London Police searched his hotel room. In a “flagrant disregard for his bail conditions”, jurors were told that police found an Amazon Fire Stick in his hotel TV allowing him to connect to cloud computing services with a newly purchased smart phone, keyboard and mouse.