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Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

bbc.co.uk

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

#101

Post by Nextgrid »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #6

> The jury was told that while he was on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and in police protection at a Travelodge hotel, he continued hacking and carried out his most infamous hack. >Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone. This sounds too fantastical to be true. This guy is obviously brilliant, disa…

I suspect this is being brought up in an attempt to demonize and pump up this guy's hacking skills to reduce the embarrassment of targeted companies but also of police. He presumably was in police custody at the time and they were meant to deny him internet access, but weren't competent enough to understand that these devices can be rooted & turned into a general-purpose computer. Therefore, rather than admitting this (obvious) mistake, they're trying to make it sound like installing a chrooted Linux environment or RDP/SSH client on such a device is some advanced hacking skill.

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

#102

Post by thomastjeffery »

mise_en_place wrote: post #85
thomastjeffery wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel remorse for his crimes. Am I a psychopath? Hacking a game company just so you can show people what is being worked on should not be a crime .

The Rockstar breach was just one instance of criminal behavior. This individual is clearly dangerous and should not be allowed back into society. There is a pattern of blatant disregard of the law, it's not like he's a grey-hat or even black-hat security researcher.

Is it a disregard for the law, or a disagreement?

The law is unjust to begin with. I don't blame anyone for breaking it twice. Would I recommend it? No. That doesn't mean I have to judge them for it.

The scary behavior here is his violence; but that violence was clearly a reaction to the violence he was confronted with: being arrested and threatened. I'm not convinced that he is a threat to society.

Sure, I can agree that it was wrong for him to react with violence. But what else could I reasonably expect from someone with Autism being punished for technically-illegal behavior?

Have you ever spent more than 10 minutes with someone who has severe Autism? If you have, then you know not to expect them to be great at following arbitrary rules. That doesn't mean they have to be institutionalized!

The solution to this problem is well-known: treatment. It's clear that that is not the goal in this case.

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

#103

Post by nicklecompte »

switch007 wrote: post #74
nicklecompte wrote: post #53

BBC's actual headline: "Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order" The editorialized reframing of the headline is a bit subtle but still incredibly dishonest. An indefinite psychiatric order is simply not the same as a life sentence.

The BBC regularly updates headlines after publication (A/B testing for clicks) so it's possible it was the BBC, not the poster.

Wow - I checked the Internet Archive and you are correct, the "sentenced to life in hospital prison" headline was used when the article was originally published. I stopped reading BBC a while ago because of their sloppy standards but this is unusually bad.

FWIW in this case I would suppose the BBC online editor was careless and fixed their mistake, versus "A/B testing for clicks" generally. If it was A/B testing, the "A" headline went too far: there's a fine line between clickbait and outright lying.

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

#104

Post by jvanderbot »

kvathupo wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #30

Did anyone here read TFA? He was apparently shown to be a member of a cyber "gang", and expressed zero remorse. In this case, a judge basically has to do something. > A mental health assessment used as part of the sentencing hearing said he "continued to express the intent to return to cybercrime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated." The guy was already on bail for another hack: > The jury was told that while…

I would be inclined to agree, but I'm reminded of passages from Edwin Black's book [1] depicting the capriciousness of medical providers. E.g. a board of doctors was typically responsible for sterilization decisions in America when eugenics was mainstream during the early 1900s. It seems reasonable that doctors should be final arbiters of medical decisions, as in releasing this aforementioned hacker from a mental hos…

Given the magnitude of his continuous hacks, and his verbally expressed desire to do it again and complete lack of remorse, the alternative is prison, either now, or on repeat offenses.

The chance of a more rehabilitation-oriented stay is probably worth it.

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

#105

Post by neilkk »

ipaddr wrote: post #54
neilkk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is fair. Another underage person found guilty of the same hacks got an 18-month rehabilitation order. This basically means severe restrictions on going out and computer use together with involvement and monitoring by social workers. This seems perfectly appropriate. They're not having decades of their life taken away from them, and they're not locked up with hardened criminals who would either vict…

In what world do you live in where getting too many parking tickets and causing violence gets you life in prison until an unknown paid state employee decides you took all non-necessary meds and drank the kool-aid? If someone was killed they would get out a certain date. The judge should have to suffer the same fate before he can order this.

> If someone was killed they would get out a certain date.

No, there are lots of people (in the United States) doing life without the possibility of parole. There are many people who will never be released from solitary confinement. Some of these people were incarcerated for fairly trivial crimes and all subsequent punishment was for acts committed while in prison.

What do you think happens to people who repeatedly cause injury to corrections officers, attempt to sexually assault them or infect them with HIV, etc? They are eventually put in solitary for life.

Some people will never be released from prison because of single acts which they have never repeated, but also are not willing to ever show (real or simulated) remorse for.

The system for people with severe mental health problems who commit repeated acts of violence works differently but is similar in its effects. Some of those people never get out, and they knew with decades of life left that they would never get out. In the UK, there are many quite high bars before a criminal convict can be incarcerated forever without chance of release. But it's much easier to block release forever from someone who is insane and considered dangerous.

The system for sex offenders works in a very similar way in some places. Some sex offenders, not the worst offenders, can be in a situation where they will never be allowed out, or being allowed out is so unlikely that it will never be worth it to them to spend years complying in order to attempt to be released.

Most jurisdictions have some method by which a person who a) did something to get them within the system, b) committed repeated assaults or threats while within the system and c) did not show that they had radically changed their attitude, will never get out. The details vary but they always exist.

My suspicion is that in most places, people in this situation vary from almost harmless: suffered bad luck and a lack of comprehension from decision makers to extremely dangerous: very hard to imagine how they could ever not be an extreme threat to innocent people outside of incarceration.

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

#106

Post by dghlsakjg »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #75

The sentence doesn't seem just. Why not just restrict him from electronic devices like what happened to ZeroCool? Surely there are better solutions that putting him in a psych ward for life or until he is 'cured'.

RTFA. They tried restricting him, and he used a fire stick and a a phone to commit another major breach while out on bail. Then he told the court that he planned to keep hacking if he was released again.

He wasn’t sentenced as such. He was determined to be mentally unfit, and put under confined treatment until he no longer poses a threat.

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

#107

Post by mk_stjames »

funshed wrote: post #99
mk_stjames wrote: post #83

I'd really like to hear more about the type of exploits here. Like, what level- Are we saying this kid is so brilliant he is writing zero-days for getting into corporate networks or if this a case of a guy in a good script-kiddie type group running phishing deals where they fire off 100000 emails a day and wait for someone to give up their logic credentials. Because if it is the former it's really hard for me to unde…

It says does it not, social engineering. Getting access to there discord, etc.. A skill in itself but not 0day or anything.

It says "He broke into the company's internal Slack messaging system ".

It does seem likely their approach is something along the lines of phishing or, given some of the other notes in the article, a combination of social engineering or stalking and blackmail...

I have a feeling a lot of these hacker groups that are heard about do very little code exploitation. I think a lot of it is: find info on employees of a company, maybe find their old social media accounts, maybe find some stuff they might not want their coworkers to ever know about or their spouses etc. And then harass and blackmail the employees for a way in.

If the news agencies were better at reporting, I think a lot of people would see these type of 'hackers' as less 'ooooh brilliant genius child like in the movies' and more 'straight up criminal harasser with no more skill than any normal software developer'.

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

#109

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gdsdfe wrote: post #50
kreddor wrote: 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

"Use" implies control / coercion, given that this guy doesn't seem to respect authority, that's not going to work. You can't make anyone work for you or "do good".

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

#110

Post by PrimeMcFly »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #106
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #75

The sentence doesn't seem just. Why not just restrict him from electronic devices like what happened to ZeroCool? Surely there are better solutions that putting him in a psych ward for life or until he is 'cured'.

RTFA. They tried restricting him, and he used a fire stick and a a phone to commit another major breach while out on bail. Then he told the court that he planned to keep hacking if he was released again. He wasn’t sentenced as such. He was determined to be mentally unfit, and put under confined treatment until he no longer poses a threat.

> RTFA. They tried restricting him, and he used a fire stick and a a phone to commit another major breach while out on bail. Then he told the court that he planned to keep hacking if he was released again.

I did RTFA. I'm saying he could have been denied access to any electronic devices without supervision, which I think would be a better alternative.

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