Hacker Responsible for Huge GTA 6 Leak Sentenced to Secure Hospital

You've probably heard about the huge leak of footage from Grand Theft Auto 6, which took place in September 2022. Responsible for it was a dangerous hacking group called Lapsus$, a key member of which was teenager Arion Kurtaj. Today we learned new details about the fate of the convicted boy.

The teenage hacker has been convicted

1. A British court has ruled that Kurtaj as a person on the autism spectrum should be placed in a maximum security psychiatric hospital (via Bloomberg). The teenager is to stay there indefinitely - can only be released after a positive evaluation of his mental state by doctors in the future.
2. Judge Patricia Lees says Kurtaj is still showing too much interest in hacking, which could make him commit another crime. As she said during the hearing: "the boy is still capable of causing harm to society through his ability to gain access to computers."

Recall that the young hacker, even under police supervision, proved that he was dangerous. After arrest was placed in a juvenile shelter, but even before that he ended up in a Travelodge hotel for a while and hacked into the servers of Rockstar, Uber and Revolut - despite being banned from acessing the Internet.

After the incident, he was arrested again and awaited sentencing. Kurtaj did not directly participate in the trial, as the court declared him unfit to stand trial due to autism.

Consequences of Lapsus$' actions

In early December, Rockstar released the first trailer of GTA 6. The footage became extremely popular (at this point it has 155 million views), which was used as an argument in Kurtaj's trial by his defense attorneys (via BBC). They argued that the 2022 data leak did not cause huge damage to the game's developers, since the trailer itself was a big success. However, the judge did not favor this version, recalling the real victims and damage done by Lapsus$.

Interestingly, according to Rockstar, the losses suffered by the company through the hacking attack in question amounted to $5 million.

During Kurtaj's trial, another anonymous Lapsus$ member was also tried.. This teenager was ordered to participate in youth rehabilitation with an 18-month supervision requirement. The rest of the hacking group's members are most likely still at large.

Given Arion Kurtaj's past, there is no assurance that he won't do something again, this time in a mental hospital, and make life miserable for another (or the same) company.

1. Rockstar Games - official website

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