London City Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on September 22 in connection with recent hacks involving Uber and GTA6.
The arrest came as part of an investigation supported by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), London police said on Twitter.
On the evening of September 22, 2022, City of London Police made an arrest as part of one of the @NCA_UK‘s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU).
He remains in police custody. pic.twitter.com/Zfa3OlDR6J
— City of London Police (@CityPolice) September 23, 2022
The teenager remains in police custody and has been charged with bail violation and computer misuse.
Teenager charged with bail violation and computer abuse pic.twitter.com/8rQnsPblIL
— City of London Police (@CityPolice) September 24, 2022
While further details of the investigation are unavailable at this time, the arrest is believed to be linked to the hacking group Lapsus$, suspected of being behind recent cyberattacks on Uber, Rockstar Games and 2K.
Over the past few months, Lapsus$ has caused a major uproar by targeting various high-profile companies including Microsoft, Nvidia, Cisco, Samsung, and Okta.
In April, City of London Police arrested seven people aged 16 to 21, including a 17-year-old boy from Oxford. The boy’s arrest came after other hackers revealed his name and address online. The teenager used the names “Breachbase” and “White” as his online pseudonyms and had reportedly made $14 million from cybercrime. This person is also said to be behind the attacks by Uber and Rockstar.
On September 15, Uber said it was responding to a cyberattack after a hacker named “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 said New York Times that Uber employees received a Slack message from an anonymous sender claiming to be a hacker stating 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 the individual was using the Slack account to reach other internal company systems.
On September 18th, more than 90 videos of the early version of GTA VI were published by a hacker under the alias “Teapotuberhacker”. The videos totaled around 50 minutes of pre-alpha gameplay and testing. The hacker said all videos were shared on Rockstar’s Slack channels and downloaded from there.
The person also claimed responsibility for the Uber hack.
Rockstar released a statement on Twitter, admitting that “an unauthorized third party” was able to access and download information from its systems, “including early development material for the next Grand Theft Auto.”
Recently, gaming company 2K also had a security breach where a threat actor sent malware to users through its help desktop. 2K is owned by Take-Two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar Games.
writing for The deskjournalist Matthew Keys said the Oxfordshire teenager’s arrest was consistent with an FBI investigation.
As the suspect is under 18, London Police are not allowed to make the suspect’s identity public.