A group of young people hacked into one of the biggest gaming companies in the world: Rockstar, creating one of the largest leaks in gaming history. 90 videos of GTA 6 were spread. Now, the court has made a ruling.
This was the hack:
- In September 2023, hackers spread 90 videos of GTA 6 after gaining access to internal information from Rockstar.
- According to reports, the same group behind the hack has previously stolen data from Nvidia: Lapsus$, a group of teenagers from the UK.
- During a stay in a hotel, one of the teenagers allegedly used a FireTV stick, his hotel room TV, and a cell phone to cause the leak in GTA 6.
This is the ruling: As reported by BBC, a ruling has now been made regarding the hacker. The 18-year-old hacker is to be indefinitely committed to a secure hospital. He will only be released when the doctors believe he no longer poses a danger.
During the investigation, the teenager reportedly became violent repeatedly and promised to return to cybercrime as soon as the opportunity arose.
The judicial jury was not to assess whether there was a criminal intent behind the act, but only whether the defendant was responsible for it. The reason is the severely pronounced autism of the 18-year-old.
According to BBC, another 17-year-old member of Lapsus$ was convicted in the same proceeding. This member of the hacker group is to spend 18 months in a rehabilitation facility for youth.
Shortly after, Rockstar released the trailer, because the studio had enough of leaks:
“5 million $ and thousands of work hours in damage”
In the proceedings, the defenders argued that the punishment should be milder. The success of the GTA 6 trailer shows that there was no real harm done to Rockstar due to the hack.
However, Rockstar speaks of over 5 million US dollars in losses and thousands of hours of work that are lost. Accordingly, the ruling of the judge was severe.
Particularly the approach makes it clear how easy it is for young hackers to infiltrate even the largest tech companies in the world. According to IGN, there were additional attacks from the group against companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and Uber.
At least among gamers, the leak seems to have only somewhat diminished the hype. Although the leaked videos caused some unrest because they looked – logically – unfinished, many fans are looking forward to the release after the trailer was released. For the German streamer MontanaBlack, for example, GTA 6 is a solid 11 out of 10
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