As part of an investigations supported by the UK’s National Cyber Crime Unite, the City of London Police have confirmed the arrest of a 17-year-old from Oxfordshire on Thursday evening on suspicion of hacking. This is reportedly the person responsible for the massive GTA 6 leak earlier this week.
While the BBC has stated that no other details about the arrest were given, US-based reporter Matthew Keys has added to the initial report to say that this was indeed an arrest of the suspected hacker behind the GTA 6 leak and Uber hack, and has come in collaboration with the FBI.
UPDATE: Arrest of 17-year-old by police in the United Kingdom over hack of Rockstar and possibly Uber was done in concert with an investigation conducted by the FBI, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) September 23, 2022
Certainly, the fact that this particular story has been thrown onto the BBC and other major news networks just days after they reported on the Rockstar hack would suggest that they know or expect there to be a connection.
The 17-year-old, who’s not even old enough to buy GTA games, sprung a massive leak of internal GTA 6 information and videos earlier this week. With over 90 videos and plenty more details that had been stolen from Rockstar Games’ internal communication networks, it confirmed that the game will take players to a modern Vice City, that there will be a series first female protagonist, alongside at least one other, and showed some NPC interactions, strip clubs and more.
While Take Two’s lawyers hastily flagged and removed videos using copyright law, Rockstar responded to the leak with a statement:
We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage of the next Grand Theft Auto. At this time, we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects.
We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Grand Theft Auto game will continue as planned and we remain as committed as ever to delivering the experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations. We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to the next game when it is ready. We want to thank everyone for their ongoing support through this situation.
While it’s often fun to jump on video game leaks and get sneaky peaks at what developers are working on, they are a grey area of video game reporting and fandom. Certainly there’s a legal line in the sand that is crossed when actively breaking into a developer’s computer networks and stealing confidential information. Between Rockstar and the break of Uber’s network by what is believed to be the same person, we can expect them to throw the book at the perpetrators. Well, maybe an ebook reader.
Source: BBC, Matthew keys (Twitter)
