The GTA 6 Leaker Might Just Be A 16-Year-Old

The Internet rumor mill is in overdrive. After the GTA 6 hack yesterday, people have been speculating about the potential identity of the hacker.

The latest rumor on the internet suspects the person behind the hack might be the leader of the hacking group going by the name of Lapsus$. What’s most astounding is that the leader of that group is, allegedly, a 16-year-old.

It’s very possible that the person behind the GTA 6 leaks is the leader of the Lapsus$ ransomware hacker crew — A 16 year old.

The kid was caught recently and faces some insanely hefty charges.

I’ll keep you all posted. pic.twitter.com/XkiBFLVt6l

— SWEGTA (@SWEGTA) September 19, 2022

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS

• Lapsus$ is a group of teenage hackers. 
• They employ unorthodox hacking to extort money from major corporations.
• Now they are being named as alleged leakers of GTA 6

Lapsus$ has been implicated in multiple hacks since the end of last year where they stole the data and tried to extort money by threatening to leak it. Their methodology is quite different from “traditional” hacking groups who use mostly use ransomware.

The group came into the spotlight in December of last year when they tried to hack and extort money from multiple Portuguese and South American telecom and media companies. They even attacked Brazil’s health ministry.

Lapsus$ communicated the following through its telegram channel, as reported by Wired, that they were neither political nor sponsored by anyone. Their sole goal was money.

Remember: The only goal is money, our reasons are not political. Please note: We are not state-sponsored and we are not in politics AT ALL.

This was, by itself, a major operation. But their biggest attack, which would rattle the cybersecurity experts, was yet to come.

In the spring of this year, they broke through the security of Vodafone, a British Telecom company, Samsung and Nvidia.

They stole one terabyte of information from Nvidia that included sensitive info about the designs of graphics cards, source code for the company’s AI, and login credentials of its employees. They began leaking the information on their telegram channel.

Just as they are doing with Rockstar Games, Lapsus$ threatened Nvidia with more leaks unless they paid their asking price.

The group may be professional in their “craft” but they still act like rowdy teenagers. They are reckless and disruptive.

Charles Carmakal, senior vice president of and chief cyber security expert at Mandiant, talking to Wired, said

This group operates on street cred and clout,” and “a victim company that wants to negotiate with them and may think about paying them likely won’t get the outcome they’re hoping for.”

So Nvidia was reluctant to meet their price.

In midst of their standoff with Nvidia, the group announced they had hacked into Samsung. They stole 190 gigabytes of info that contained valuable info about Samsung’s smartphones, like its biometric authentication.

And they weren’t going to stop there. Going a step further they even went after Ubisoft. But this time the group wasn’t as successful. Ubisoft’s security kicked in and initiated a wide password reset. They only managed to disrupt Ubisoft’s operations slightly.

The manner of the hacks and use of telegram by the alleged hacker, in the recent spat of hacks that targeted Rockstar Games and Uber, gives credibility to these rumors.

This is a quite worrying trend for the cyber security community to delve into. To think a group of teenage hackers could hack this many big corporations and that too in the span of a few months is the stuff of nightmares.

Companies need to rethink their existing security policies and guidelines. Otherwise, groups like Lapsus$ will keep hacking them, and that too without any repercussions.