The teenager that hacked into Rockstar Games, leaking the early gameplay recording of Grand Theft Auto VI, has appeared in court and has chosen to plead "not guilty" to the charges.
The report from Bloomberg stated that the 17-year-old, who hails from Oxfordshire, England, was already in breach of his bail conditions and had landed in hot water with two counts of misuse of a computer. That's before he allegedly attacked Rockstar Games' servers and enabled the dissemination of catastrophic volumes of unreleased data about Grand Theft Auto VI. And before the ransom hacks on Microsoft and Uber, which have also been attributed to the teenager's antics. It's important to note that the police have not formally identified this individual as the one behind all of these cyber sieges.
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Additionally, it is thought that the hacker is a part of the group Lapsus$. The cybercrime gang has caused significant damage to government agencies and companies over the course of 2021 and 2022, including Nvidia, Samsung, Ubisoft and others.
“Lapsus$ probably aren’t causing as much destruction as other actors with different motivations could, and I think that's the answer - they aren’t entirely motivated by money,” explained Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the antivirus company Emsisoft, in an interview with Wired. “They, therefore, attempt things that purely financially motivated cybercriminals wouldn’t. They are more likely to be adventurous and to try things - that may not have a payoff - just for the fun of it.” That ticks the box for the motivation behind an attack on Grand Theft Auto VI. The trial will proceed at an unspecified later date after the judge referred the case to a higher court.
Topics: Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto