The hacker behind the massive GTA 6 leak in September 2022 has been released from indefinite imprisonment at a secure hospital and is now awaiting a retrial.
Arion Kurtaj, a member of the notorious worldwide hacking group named Lapsus$, is waiting for his day in court once again after he was deemed unfit to stand trial in December 2023 due to a medical diagnosis of “acute autism.”
After a jury determined that he had committed the hacks, Kurtaj was sentenced to imprisonment at a secure hospital, either for life or until he was deemed medically fit to stand trial again.
That time has finally come, as BBC correspondent Joe Tidy confirmed on Bluesky that Kurtaj is now awaiting a retrial in “normal prison,” set to take place in November 2026 — the same month GTA 6 is expected to release.
Thus far, nothing else is known about the case, nor how Kurtaj is being retried despite committing the hacking during a period of time when his mental state was so severe that it required hospitalization.
Tidy stated on LinkedIn that he’s attempting to glean more information from authorities, but says police are being extremely tight-lipped about the situation to the point that it’s “like getting blood out of a stone.”
Kurtaj’s 2022 hack was unprecedented, leaking 90 clips from GTA 6, along with its source code, on a fan forum. What’s more, he was out on bail after hacking NVIDIA and in police protection at a Travelodge when he infiltrated Rockstar’s systems, using only an Amazon Firestick, the TV at his hotel, and a cell phone to pull off the cyberattack.
Officials said Kurtaj had expressed violent behavior while in police custody, including “dozens of reports of injury or property damage,” with the BBC reporting a mental health assessment that claimed he “continued to express the intent to return to cybercrime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated.”
GTA 6 releases on November 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. You can find more information about the decade’s most-anticipated title on our hub.
Remember when Gaben and Valve told the kid who leaked Half-Life 2 to fly over to Seattle for a “job interview”
I hope their worthless piece of shit game gets decompiler, reverse engineered and open sourced on day 1
I mean, plug it into the copyright violating machine (any LLM) and have it spit out the input as an output and now it’s legally copyright-free!
That’s exactly what companies are doing to remove open licenses from public code. So why not do it to all of their products as well? Fuck em!
The legal system exists to protect the interests of the ruling class.
Because the judge won’t side with you, only with them
Except there’s already precedent for “clean room reimplementations” being legal. People are already doing this plenty, and not yet any precedent for it being illegal.
Clean room is done without knowing anything about the workings of the original. If you cant reimpliment without feeding it into an LLM then I dont think you get to make that claim anymore. Compiled or not what the LLM spits out is derived directly from the original.
Clean room would be describing the app to an LLM and having it vibe code the thing from scratch.
I think you and I might be talking about two different things? I am talking about describing it to an LLM and it vibe-coding it from scratch, with the exception that the LLM has likely been trained on leaked code, but I don’t think that’s a problem unique to LLMs. Humans have also seen leaked code, and just like we can’t selectively disable neurons when we hand-code clean room reimplementations, neither can LLMs.
It sounds like you’re talking about reverse engineering/decompiling? Which, yeah, is generally considered piracy regardless of if done by a human or LLM.
What’s more, he was out on bail after hacking NVIDIA and in police protection at a Travelodge when he infiltrated Rockstar’s systems, using only an Amazon Firestick, the TV at his hotel, and a cell phone to pull off the cyberattack.
An inspiration to us all -“Learn to hack, learn to quadcopter/drone”
Learn to code --> coders are obsolete --> cybercrime
Damn, where did it all go wrong
Damn
He personally discovered Jensen was banging a chinese chip smuggler! /s
GTA 6 releases on November 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. You can find more information about the decade’s most-anticipated title on our hub.
What fucking business has the BBC including things like this? This is not a serious addition to a news article.
Mother trying to shoplift baby diapers beaten up by police. Check out our Amazon affiliate links for a pack of Pampers!
It’s almost like an advert
It’s
almost likean advertYeah, but not for GTA - but for BBCs cultural coverage. It’s to keep you clicking on BBC links - why? Not really sure…
Maybe it’s AI written. The AI corps can’t find a profit so they’ve been mixing in ad reads on their subscribers lmao. Gemini calls them conversational ads
Yeah but its the most realistic game EVER don’t you care about the ARTISTS who worked sooooo hard to make this piece of art.
Ignore that the entire concept is the most bland version of the Florida man joke; except its also at least 5 years past due.
Ignore that the OMG ITS SO REALISTIC graphics A. are about on par with every other “AAA” “realistic” graphics and B. lack any and all style because its a corporate amalgam of “artists” (Sorry, not sorry, your skill is immediately devalued if you work for fucking rockstar).
Ignore that GTAV ran a racket worth BILLIONS selling ingame money. Money people could have gotten for free if it was an actual game and not a microtransaction hellhole of a piece of shit designed by literal demons who only care to do the bare minimum of work in order to steal from people who cannot/will not self regulate their finances and spend hundreds of dollars for something people used to/still do get for free. (Yes I am mad at every “live service” game that charges $40 for 1/10th of the content. Content we used to get in these things called “expansion packs”. That cost $40 one time. And had some idea of a vision and theme. Atleast my runescape sub as a kid went partly to keeping servers on. I’d be willing to be a shark card or two that 99% of GTAV was P2P with how hackable that game is.)
Ignore all the games that do something interesting, or that try to say something, anything. Ignore My Summer Car, a period piece of 90s Finland, realistic in how much rural life can fucking suck and fucking rule at the same time. Ignore Desktop Explorers, a game about so much I can’t talk about without spoiling it. A game that explores humans, relationships, how much computers enable us to be great and are also that computers will ruin us. Ignore Cairn, a game about trauma, colonialism, loss, and personal struggles. Ignore Big Walk, a game where I was trying to ID plant life it was so “realistic”. Ignore how it forces you to think about you, and your friend(s), and how you communicate. Ignore the deep love and care those devs feel for you, the world, how you and them think and feel about each other.
Ignore everything interesting in video games to buy THE NEXT BIG THING. The thing that HAS to be big because if not we’ve decided gaming has failed. You will mindlessly shoot cops without achieving anything. You will drive in a digital Miami, one we renamed so teehee we can be edgy. No we will not be critical of the actual issues Miami and Florida have. Look a silly gator!!
You will pay $100 for the base experience. You will pay that again when it comes to PC. You will also pay that again if you want to play online and not have to grind 3000 car deliveries.
Gaming to me has been such… Its borderline therapy for me. I play a LOT of slop. Shit worse the GTA6 can/will be. But after crying over Big Walk, Desktop Explorer, and Cairn all within like 2 weeks of each other, I think the GTA6 stuff is gonna jokerfy me.
Also did not expect to type that much. I think the brain zaps from my current “Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome” spoke to me.
ugh… those brain zaps are THE WORST, hope you recover soon
Ignore that GTAV ran a racket worth BILLIONS selling ingame money. Money people could have gotten for free if it was an actual game
What? You could, very easily. I don’t know who the market for shark cards even was because even from a pay2win microtransaction standpoint they were way worse than just playing the game, at least post casino heist and especially for the several years when cayo perico was a 1-2 million GTA$ an hour solo grind.
I’d be willing to be a shark card or two that 99% of GTAV was P2P with how hackable that game is.
It was 100% P2P, apart from the initial matchmaking connection. It was also a nightmare of client-authoritative bullshit with no sanity checking, making it unplayable on PC because hackers could just teleport you around or empty your inventory among other things.
Rockstar is a POS company but you can’t seriously be mad that the general populace wants to play a mega budget open world crime simulator instead of an indie game about trauma where the principle gameplay is bug collecting.
No, GTA isn’t a political masterpiece. It’s an accessible lampoon of the modern world. It is what it is. The general populace are hyped because a company has spent shitload of time and money on designing High Quality Slop. No, there probably won’t be a mission where you throw Ron Desantis out of a plane.
Rockstar is a POS company but you can’t seriously be mad that the general populace wants to play
yes, yes i can, watch me
It’s an accessible lampoon of the modern world
accessibility is when your game runs at 30 fps on modern hardware
The general populace are hyped because a company has spent [billions of dollars marketing their game over the last decade while union busting and sending children to life in prison]
imagine being this much of a bootlicker on a post like this, lol
Anyone who buys GTA 6 is a
I will never be as based as this person.
For real. Hacking Nvidia and using it as leverage to open source their drivers. There’s evidence that Nvidia’s slight willing to play ball with Linux around then was a result of that hack
CW: meat, nsfw
I wasn’t interested in buying GTA 6 because 4 and 5 were shit for me, San Andreas was the last good one despite it’s bugs, but now they can all burn for all i care.
He’s intent on returning to cybercrime, V for Vengeance.
Everyone going on about the “hype” behind this release and acting like it is the most anticipated game ever but it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to the hype San Andreas built up in a time before social media had really taken hold in the way it has these days.
When those trailers dropped with Welcome to the Jungle pumping chefs kiss That was actual hype. What is happening with this release is just fake shit.
Exactly what i’ve been thinking the whole time.
Other than a few mentions here and there i don’t know much because my interest in it is so low and i watch a lot of videos about games and it’s not even recommended to me and you know how invasive YT algorithms are, the one thing i remember from whenever it was announced is you are going to be playing as twins so you can choose between them, kinda like AC Syndicate.
