For leaking GTA 6 game clips, the hacker ordered to stay in a hospital

A UK court has ordered Arion Kurtz, an 18-year-old hacker from Oxford and one of the members of hacker group Lapsus, to live in a hospital for an indefinite period for the charge of leaking clips of the upcoming sixth season of the popular video game 'Grand Theft Auto' (GTA-6).

Apart from Kurtz, another 17-year-old member of the hacker group Lapsus was also found guilty in the same trial. The court ordered him to stay in a rehabilitation center for 18 months amid strict monitoring and bans on VPN use. Kurtz and the 17-year-old are the first members of the Lapsus group to be convicted.

In the verdict announced on Thursday, the judge said Kurtz had "good skills and great motivation" to commit cybercrimes, British media reported the BBC. As a result, he is a ‘high risk’ to the public. Kurtz also suffers from autism. So, he has to stay in the hospital for an indefinite period due to leaked GTA 6 clips and for health reasons. However, if the doctors feel that Kurtz has recovered and is not a threat to society, then he will be released.

But the court has already heard that Kurtz has been disorderly and violent even while in custody. Kurtz underwent a mental health examination as part of the sentencing hearing. According to the examination report, he expressed his desire to return to the world of cybercrime very soon and is very keen to continue hacking.

The court's jury board was told that Kurtz continued to hack while he was staying at a hotel under police protection for the Nvidia and BT/EE hacks. And at that time, he hacked the website of Rockstar, the maker of GTA-6.

Recently, the group carried out cyberattacks on big technology companies like Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games. In this, these institutions face a loss of about 10 million US dollars. The scary thing is that even though Kurtz's laptop was confiscated during the GTA-6 hack, he was able to hack Rockstar using an Amazon Firestick, a hotel television and a mobile phone. Soon after, Kurtz stole 90 clips from the highly anticipated and awaited GTA 6 video game. In fact, Kurtz broke into Rockstar's internal messaging system and announced that if Rockstar authorities did not contact him by telegram within 24 hours, he would begin leaking more valuable information.

At one point, Kurtz published those clips and source code of GTA-6 in an online forum using the username titled 'TipTuberhacker'. After this incident he was arrested again. Rockstar Games told the court that the hack cost them $500,000 and thousands of additional employee hours.

The members of the hacker group Lapsus are mostly teenagers. Between 2021-2022, the group was declared a 'digital bandit' by a Brazilian court for carrying out cyberattacks on various institutions around the world.