Getty Image
When the official Grand Theft Auto VI trailer was released earlier this month, it stopped the entire video game world in its tracks.
But it wasn’t the first time fans had seen footage or info from the game.
Because a year prior, a hacker leaked video from the game that, like the trailer, had fans captivated.
Little did they know that the hacker, 17-year-old Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, England, had an absolutely insane backstory.
Joe Tidy of BBC.com reports that Kurtaj, who is autistic, is a leading member of the LapsusS$ cyber gang.
(Which honestly sounds cool as hell)
Kurtaj and Lapsus$ reportedly went after several tech companies such as Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games, which cost them nearly $10m.
But that’s just the beginning of where things get wild.
GTA VI Hacker Did So While In Custody At Hotel
Kurtaj was arrested and placed under police custody before the Rockstar Games GTA VI hack. So how the heck did he get the game data and footage?
“The jury was told that while he was on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and in police protection at a Travelodge hotel, he continued hacking and carried out his most infamous hack,” Tidy reports. “Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone.”
WHAT A LEGEND! (Note that BroBible.com does not, in any form, endorse hacking or any other illegal activity)
So this 17-year-old kid not only hacked one of the world’s biggest video game companies, he did so using the equivalent of some tape and a piece of string.
Kurtaj then broke into the company’s Slack chat and warned the company that “if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram within 24 hours I will start releasing the source code”.
He then posted the clips and source code on a forum under the username TeaPotUberHacker.