GTA 6 Leaker Hacked Rockstar Games From A Hotel Room Using An Amazon Fire Stick

The young hacker caused a lot of chaos with only a few resources at his disposal.

By Shahmeer Sarfaraz August 25, 2023

2 minutes read

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The GTA 6 hacker that attacked Rockstar Games to gain access to over 90 early development videos of the game seemingly did it using only an Amazon Fire Stick in a hotel room while on bail.
Arion Kurtaj was seemingly caught “red-handed” when the City of London Police raided his Travelodge hotel room in Bicester. He was being held in the room on bail due to previously hacking Nvidia.
The hacker was joined by an unnamed 17-year-old teenager. Both of them are a part of the digital bandit group dubbed Lapsus$, infamous for attacking many giant corporations with malicious intent.
Rockstar Games eventually confirmed the leaked footage to be the upcoming GTA 6. However, the company confirmed it remains unaffected and has continued to develop the title like usual.

Last year witnessed one of the most notorious leaks in the gaming ecosystem’s history, resulting in over 90 GTA 6 early development videos casually appearing on the internet. While things have simmered down since then, more details about the mastermind behind the massive online attack have emerged. As per a new report by BBC, the 18-year-old GTA 6 leaker Arion Kurtaj hacked Rockstar Games using only an Amazon Fire Stick.

Arion was able to carry out the attack from a hotel room in England with an Amazon Fire Stick plugged in for online access. He was seemingly caught “red-handed” when the City of London Police raided his Travelodge hotel room in Bicester. He was being held in the room on bail after his March 2022 arrest for hacking GPU manufacturer Nvidia. The hacker was banned from using the internet, but it was not enough to deter his antics.

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Police discovered plenty of evidence against him in the hotel room, stumbling upon the Amazon Fire Stick connected to the room’s TV. This small setup was enough for him to wreak an insurmountable amount of havoc on Rockstar Games. He breached his way into the cloud computing services with a keyboard, mouse, and a newly purchased smartphone.

Moreover, he went ahead with the hack despite being on bail for breaching other companies in the past. The hacker has not worked alone, and an unnamed 17-year-old teenager also assisted him. Both of them are a part of the digital bandit group dubbed Lapsus$ that is infamous for penetrating through the backdoors of many giant corporations.

The group was also able to attack other major corporations in the industry, including the digital banking group Revolut., giant tech conglomerate Microsoft, the digital taxi service Uber, and eventually Rockstar Games. His final attack at GTA 6 devs was stated to be the “most audacious” due to his erratic attitude during the hack. He gained access to Rockstar Games’ Slack and announced that he was not an employee but rather an attacker.

Arion Kurtaj initially hailed that he had access to a lot of GTA 6 content, mentioning that Rockstar Games should contact him on Telegram unless it wants the game’s source code leaked online. Whether the company reached out to him or not remains private, but the disastrous consequences of the attack resulted in GTA 6 video leaks spreading all over the internet. Rockstar Games even made an official announcement confirming the leaks.

The aftermath of the leak made Rockstar Games go on a damage control phase, take legal action against the hackers involved, and DMCA strike anyone who was further sharing the leaked videos. However, the company and its reputation at large remained unaffected by the leak. It is currently unclear how much money the Lapsus$ group has generated from the crime sprees.

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