UK teen suspected of Uber and Rockstar hacks arrested
The suspect, charged with breach of bail and computer misuse offences, is believed to be the same individual behind earlier attacks on Microsoft, Okta and Nvidia
The London City Police on September 22 arrested a 17-year old in Oxfordshire in connection with recent hacks involving Uber and GTA6.
The arrest was made as part of an investigation supported by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), the London Police stated on Twitter.
The teenager remains in police custody and has been charged with breach of bail and computer misuse offences.
While further details about the investigation are not currently available, it is believed that the arrest is connected to the Lapsus$ hacking group, which is suspected of being behind recent cyber attacks on Uber, Rockstar Games and 2K.
In the last few months, Lapsus$ has caused a huge uproar by targeting various high-profile entities, including Microsoft, Nvidia, Cisco, Samsung and Okta.
In April, City of London Police detained seven individuals, ages 16 to 21, of which, one was 17-year old boy from Oxford. The arrest of the boy was made after other hackers leaked his name and address online. The teenager used the names "Breachbase" and "White" as his online aliases and had reportedly earned $14 million through cybercrimes. This individual is also believed to be behind the Uber and Rockstar attacks.
On 15 September, Uber said that the company was responding to a cyber attack after a hacker, known as "TeaPots", gained access to the company's systems.
Uber reportedly took several of its internal communication systems, including Slack and engineering systems, offline as it investigated the extent of the breach.
A source told the New York Times that Uber employees received a Slack message from an anonymous sender, who claimed to be a hacker and stated that "Uber has suffered a data breach."
The report added that the hacker likely compromised an employee's Slack account and used it to deliver the message to other employees. An explicit image shared on an internal employee information page suggested that the individual utilised the Slack account to reach other internal company systems.
On September 18, more than 90 videos from GTA VI's early version were released by a hacker using the alias "Teapotuberhacker". The videos totalled around 50 minutes of pre-alpha gameplay and testing. The hacker said all videos were shared in the Rockstar's Slack channels and were downloaded from there.
The person also claimed responsibility for the Uber hack.
Rockstar posted a statement to Twitter, acknowledging that "an unauthorised third party" was able to access and download information from its systems, "including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto".
Recently, the gaming firm 2K also had a security breach that saw a threat actor sending malware to users using its help desktop. 2K is owned by Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games.
Writing for The Desk, journalist Matthew Keys said that the arrest of the Oxfordshire teenager was in concert with an investigation conducted by the FBI.
Because the accused is less than 18 years old, London Police are not permitted to make public the suspect's identity.