The London Jury recently found out that a young member of the Teen Lapsus$ hacking group was behind the recent cyberattacks on Nvidia, Uber, and Rockstar Games. The Southwark Crown Court found the 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj guilty on a total of 12 counts, including multiple violations of the UK’s Computer Misuse Act, blackmail, and fraud. In the past two years, the teenage member of the group has been arrested not once but multiple times.
Regardless of his arrests, he still continued to carry out high-profile cyberattacks on multiple companies, including Nvidia, with the use of social engineering as well as SIM-swapping methods. The last time the London police arrested Arion Kurtaj was in September 2022 for violating bail conditions that actually prohibited him from using the internet for anything.
As per the BBC, prosecutors shared with the court that Kurtaj carried with him an Amazon Fire Stick in the hotel he was staying at. This stick allowed the Teen Lapsus$ member to connect to the cloud computing services with a recently bought phone, keyboard, as well as a mouse. During that time, Kurtaj continued to leak gameplay videos of the much-anticipated Rockstar Games title, Grand Theft Auto 6. Not only this, but he also threatened the developers before he released the leaks.
Kurtaj also went on to hack the financial company called Revolut as well as Uber. Since the teen wasn’t really fit to stand trial, the jury, in turn, was “asked to determine whether or not he did the acts alleged — not if he did it with criminal intent.” Aside from Kurtaj, the jury also found another 17-year-old Teen Lapsus$ member guilty, whose name wasn’t revealed because of his age. On top of this, the police also arrested multiple other teenagers last year who were involved with Lapsus$.
The Teen Lapsus$ hacking group has forced a lot of organizations and companies worldwide to come up with much better cybersecurity measures. At the beginning of August, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published a detailed report asking the companies to come up with more effective SIM-swapping protections due to these recent Lapsus$ hacks. Leakers, hackers, and fans are really going all out when it comes to Grand Theft Auto 6, so it would be awesome if Rockstar Games ends up releasing the game or sharing some information regarding it soon!
