Teenage GTA 6 hacker accused of blackmailing Rockstar with releasing sequel's source code
Grand Theft Auto VI is one of the most anticipated games ever. Its notoriety has also made it a big target for hacking. According to a recent Reuters story, this includes a hacker sending a message to all Rockstar staff members on the company's Slack threatening to release GTA VI's source code.
According to Reuters, the accused hacker is Arion Kurtaj, a teenage member of the Lapsus$ hacking group. He is facing 12 charges total, including three counts of blackmail, two counts of fraud, and six charges under the U.K.'s Computer Misuse Act.
On top of Rockstar, Kurtaj is also accused of targeting companies including Revolut, Uber, and Nvidia, and of blackmailing the British broadband provider BT Group and demanding a $4 million ransom. Kurtaj has been deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
In 2022, Rockstar Games suffered an a "network intrusion" resulting in a host of unfinished gameplay and assets being leaked across social media. Rockstar moved quickly to remove the leaked material, but it wasn't able to entirely prevent its spread. It even appeared in Goat Simulator 3 before being promptly taken down.
"We take leaks very seriously indeed and they disappoint all of us, it's really frustrating and upsetting to the team," Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in the wake of the leaks. "However as a business matter we're not affected. But as a personal matter and an emotional matter, our teams are affected."
While Kurtaj wasn't named at the time, Uber released a blog revealing that it was working with the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate its own data breaches, and that they suspected it was the same hacker behind the Rockstar breaches.
We don't know when GTA 6 will be released, but it could be as soon as next year. In the meantime, a jury will attempt to determine whether Kurtaj is responsible for the alleged hacking, though it will not issue a guilty or not guilty verdict.
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