Teen who leaked Grand Theft Auto VI sentenced to indefinite stay in "secure hospital," report says

[Bud Notweiser]

Cut his fingers off.

A British judge has sentenced the 18-year-old hacker who leaked footage of
the unreleased video game Grand Theft Auto VI to indefinite detention in a
secure hospital, according to a BBC report.

The hacker, Arion Kurtaj, leaked 90 clips from Rockstar Games' forthcoming
Grand Theft Auto VI and also launched cyberattacks on Uber, Nvidia and
other corporations. A British jury in August convicted Kurtaj and another
teen, who were members of the international hacking group Lapsus$, for
hacking, fraud and extortion.

Rockstar Games did not reply to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment on
the breach.

The judge presiding over the case ruled that Kurtaj should be placed in a
secure hospital until mental health professionals decided he no longer
poses a risk to the public, according to the BBC. Doctors had deemed
Kurtaj, who is severely autistic, unfit to stand trial.

The UK's secure hospitals balance psychiatric care with custody and are
considered much less harsh than prison. They double as residential
treatment centers that aim to rehabilitate, and eventually discharge,
offenders. There are 60 such secure mental health hospitals in England and
Wales, according to a report from The Guardian.

Guild Lodge is one of 60 medium-secure mental health hospitals in England
and Wales that house people deemed to be a danger either to themselves or
others on account of their mental illness.

Kurtaj remains "a high risk of serious harm to the public through skill in
gaining unfettered access to computers," the judge said in a court on
Thursday this week, according to Bloomberg.

While on bail awaiting sentencing for the cyberattacks and despite having
his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj carried out the Grand Theft Auto hack using
an Amazon Fire TV Stick, a hotel television and his mobile phone, BBC
reported. He breached the company's internal messaging system and wrote,
"if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram within 24 hours I will start
releasing the source code." He publicly posted the code and clips of the
video game shortly thereafter, according to the broadcaster.

GTA 6 is among the most highly anticipated video game releases of all
time. Less than a day after Rockstar posted a trailer, it had racked up
more than 60 million views on YouTube. The game is slated to be released
sometime in 2025.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grand-theft-auto-leak-teen-hacker-
hospitalized/