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Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

bbc.co.uk

41–50 of 361 posts

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#42
post #8

> Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone. That's quite a feat. > Rockstar Games alone told the court that the hack cost it $5m to recover from plus thousands of hours of staff time. Either the kid is a genius or Rockstar really don't value their security much. Or maybe a bit of both?

From TFA, and given prior hacks, he's very skilled.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#43

Life in prison for non-violent crime clearly sounds like revenge and sour grapes. The big guys clearly don't appreciate having their insecurity being exposed this way (keep in mind none of these hacks required any significant technical skills), and too many people would lose face. Something had to be done, so here it is. The disparity of this punishment compared to what is usually given out for similar crimes (in the…

Did you read the article?

> The court heard that Kurtaj had been violent while in custody with dozens of reports of injury or property damage.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#44

Seems reasonable to me. Glad there aren't any comments yet saying "oh gosh it was just a video game company, those are a scourge anyway on family morals!"

Not to me, it's a slippery slope. Want to give someone a life sentence? Cool, all you need to do is to stamp the autism label on them and put them in a secure hospital and convict them for a crime that would get like 5 years in prison. The point is not the details (I'm obviously not a laywer or anything remotely related to that), the point is that it seems to be a slippery slope.

> Cool, all you need to do is to stamp the autism label on them and put them in a secure hospital and convict them for a crime that would get like 5 years in prison.

Good thing that’s not what happened then I guess.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#45
Life in prison for up to $10m in damages? At first I thought the number must be off by a factor of 10. I couldn’t help but see Dr Evil for a moment.

These are at best property crimes, and while the sums are non trivial, sentencing children to indefinite imprisonment for a nonviolent crime against a megacorp is unconscionable.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#47

It concluded that Lapsus$ "made clear just how easy it was for its members (juveniles, in some instances) to infiltrate well-defended organisations". To me, that sounds more like they were not well-defended ...

This is typical writing from people who aren't familiar with technology. Could this kid be a genius? Maybe. It's more likely he found exploits like the ones we're seeing on the front page today[0]. It's not super impressive or surprising, to me at least.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38720544

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#48

Life in prison for non-violent crime clearly sounds like revenge and sour grapes. The big guys clearly don't appreciate having their insecurity being exposed this way (keep in mind none of these hacks required any significant technical skills), and too many people would lose face. Something had to be done, so here it is. The disparity of this punishment compared to what is usually given out for similar crimes (in the…

It’s not life in prison. He’s being confined to a mental institution due to severe autism. It’s unlikely that he can be rehabilitated and would remain a cyber security threat to society if released in the future. This is hardly revenge.

This guy is as much of a "cyber security threat" as your typical socially-awkward gamer teenager, of which we have plenty of. Every internet-connected server out there constantly gets probed by bots/tools often operated by similar people and nothing is ever done about it.

This guy's crime wasn't that he was hacking/phishing/stalking or the general obnoxious behavior that often comes with this kind of person - this is effectively decriminalized in the UK anyway, as long as the victim isn't a big, culturally-relevant company. Financially-motivated scammers and crime rings take advantage of this.

This guy's crime is that he embarrassed the establishment, so he has to be painted a much scarier monster than he really is and made an example of, since the truth that most technically-inclined, socially-awkward teenagers would be equally capable of such hacking would be hard to accept and put into question the competence of the affected companies.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#49
There is an expectation here that this person will react to being arrested and imprisoned with patience; yet patience is not expected from literally anyone else involved.

It's abundantly clear that he is not being punished for harming people. He is being punished for not playing along. "Refusing to play along" is one of the most well known symptoms of Autism. This person is being punished for neurodivergence. I'm not even remotely OK with that.

Re: Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

#50
post #8

> Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone. That's quite a feat. > Rockstar Games alone told the court that the hack cost it $5m to recover from plus thousands of hours of staff time. Either the kid is a genius or Rockstar really don't value their security much. Or maybe a bit of both?

shouldn't they at least try to use this kid for good instead of locking him up ? but then who know maybe a 3 letter gov agency will take him to a bunker somewhere
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