Last year, GTA 6 had dozens of clips leaked and over a year later the person behind these leaks has finally been sentenced. Thanks to a recent BBC reporting we now know more on the subject.  Arion Kurtaj, a member of an international gang called Lapsus$, was found to be the leaker of over 90 clips leaked into the internet and has been sentenced to be indefinitely imprisoned in a hospital prison. Kurtaj, who suffers from acute autism was deemed unfit to stand trial by doctors, but Kurtaj himself has stated his desire to continue hacking after he is released. This confession has made the judge deem Kurtaj too dangerous for his lack of empathy and skills in hacking.  The gang he is associated with has also been involved in hacking various major tech companies, not just Rockstar Games. They were involved in hacks to companies such as Uber, and Nvidia costing over 10 million dollars in damages. 

continued to express the intent to return to cybercrime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated. – Via BBC

It was further revealed that while Kurtaj was out on bail, he continued hacking from remote locations such as hotels. The actual Rockstar hack was done without his laptop since it was confiscated by police, but he managed to still hack into the studios with only his phone, an Amazon TV Fire Stick, and his hotel’s television. This is both highly impressive and also extremely eye-opening as these things can now be done with simple tools that are at everyone’s disposal. He was later re-arrested but not before blackmailing Rockstar Games to content him in 24 hours after the hack or that he would release the game’s source code. 

Kurtaj’s defense team during the trial before he was deemed unfit, recounted the release trailer of the GTA 6 with it reaching over 126 million views already. The defense team stated that their clients hacks had no effect on the game’s popularity due to how its trailer performed. The judge blew them off by bringing Rockstar’s statement that the hack cost them around 5 million dollars and over a thousand hours of labor. This whole situation of leaks and hackers in the industry has been one of the biggest problems running rampant, with the initial GTA 6 trailer being leaked a day before it was meant to be released, forcing Rockstar to drop it a day earlier. More recently with the company-wide Insomniac leak there needs to be a way to fix these problems to prevent things like this from happening to studios in the future.