The 18-year-old Briton thought to be the mastermind of the sensational ‘Lapsus$’ hack attack has been found guilty by a jury in London. He was accused of hacking high-tech companies, stealing data and demanding ransom to prevent a breach.
Arion Kurtaj, 18, of Oxford, England, the alleged ringleader of the notorious hacking group, was convicted. Specifically, he was accused of breaking into a high-tech company to steal data and demand a ransom to prevent a breach.
Kurtaj, along with other teenagers from various countries operating under the name Lapsus$, attacked and extorted large, well-known high-tech companies. Affected companies included Cisco, Octa, NVIDIA, T-Mobile, Samsung, Vodafone, Ubisoft, 2K, Globant, etc. Tech service providers such as Uber and Revolut, as well as game developer Rockstar Games were also affected.
In 2022, Kurthai was arrested twice for hacking activities in January and March. The first arrest was for a SIM-swapping attack against mobile provider EEE, followed by arrests for Lapsus$ attacks against various high-tech companies.
Last year, while out on bail, he allegedly hacked into the City of London Police’s cloud storage environment.
His sentence has yet to be determined.
The young genius is thought to have earned around 300 bitcoins in total from his hacking activities, which he spent on online gambling. The possible sentence for Arion Kurtaj is not yet known.