By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – A teenage member of the Lapsus$ hacking group was on Wednesday found by a London jury to have hacked Uber and fintech firm Revolut, and then blackmailed the developers of best-selling videogame Grand Theft Auto.
Arion Kurtaj, 18, embarked on a solo cybercrime spree in September 2022, first targeting Revolut and then Uber two days later.
He then hacked Rockstar Games and threatened to release the source code for the planned Grand Theft Auto sequel in a Slack message sent to all Rockstar staff.
He was not fit to stand trial, so the jury at Southwark Crown Court was asked to find whether he committed the acts rather than deliver a verdict of guilty or not guilty.
Kurtaj had previously hacked and blackmailed Britain’s biggest broadband provider BT Group and mobile operator EE in 2021, and chipmaker Nvidia Corp in February 2022.
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The jury on Wednesday found Kurtaj committed 12 offences, including three counts of blackmail, two counts of fraud and six charges under the Computer Misuse Act.
Kurtaj’s case was heard alongside the trial of a 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons. The 17-year-old was alleged to have participated in the hacks on BT and Nvidia.
The unnamed teenager was found guilty on Wednesday of one count of fraud, one count of blackmail and one count under the Computer Misuse Act relating to the hacking of Nvidia.
He was found not guilty of one count of blackmail and one count under the Computer Misuse Act in relation to BT.
The 17-year-old had previously pleaded guilty to one count under the Computer Misuse Act and one count of fraud in relation to the BT hack.
He had also admitted a Computer Misuse Act offence relating to the hacking of the City of London Police’s cloud storage, weeks after the force arrested him in 2022.