UK jury finds teenager carried out the 2022 Rockstar Games hack

On August 23, 2023, jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London decided that Arion Kurtaj, 18, was the person behind a run of cyberattacks that included the 2022 break-in at Rockstar Games, the Press Association reported.

This was not a conviction. Psychiatrists had found Kurtaj unfit to stand trial, because of his autism according to NME, so the jury only had to decide whether he did the acts, not whether he intended a crime. It agreed unanimously that he did, on 12 counts that included blackmail and fraud.

What it means for GTA VI

Nothing changes for the game itself. The finding settles who a UK court holds responsible for the breach. Kotaku asked Rockstar for comment, and its report carries no reply. Leonidle does not describe or link anything taken in the breach.

How the attack was carried out

Trial reports say Kurtaj was out on bail over an earlier hack of chipmaker Nvidia at the time. He had been housed in a Travelodge in Bicester, Oxfordshire, for his own protection. With an Amazon Fire Stick plugged into the room's TV, plus a phone, a keyboard and a mouse, he reached cloud computing services. He then posted a message in Rockstar's internal Slack calling himself an attacker, and threatened to publish the game's source code.

Prosecutors described him as a "key player" in the Lapsus$ hacking group. The case also covered attacks on Nvidia, BT and EE, Uber and Revolut. A 17-year-old co-defendant, who cannot be named, was found guilty on some counts and cleared on others. No date had yet been set for Kurtaj's sentencing; the outcome is in our later report.