An alleged 17-year-old hacker behind the recent Uber and Rockstar hacks was arrested by the City of London police on September 22 as part of a hacking investigation supported by the UK’s National Crime Agency.
While details about the investigation haven’t been disclosed yet, the teen is reportedly linked with the Lapsus$ hacking group. Uber blamed the group for its recent hack, stating that the group compromised a contractor to gain access to its systems.
Lapsus$ has been involved in several attacks on large-scale companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, Cisco, Samsung, Okta and now most recently, Uber and Rockstar Games. The group was believed to be led by a 16-year-old teenager from the UK back in April when the UK police arrested seven people between 16 and 21 years of age. However, two arrested minors were later released on bail.
The alleged mastermind behind Lapsus$, who previously went by the aliases ‘White’ or ‘Breachbase’ was also reportedly arrested.
However, the threat actor behind the Uber and Rockstar hacks went by the aliases ‘TeaPots’ and ‘teapottuberhacker’ respectively. With Uber attributing the attack to Lapsus$ and Breached hacking forum owner pompompurin claiming that White was behind the Uber and Rockstar hacks.
In addition to that, another gaming company owned by Take-Two Interactive, 2K was also breached on September 20 when their help desk was used to send malware to the customers. While the attack hasn’t been attributed to Lapsus$ yet, both Rockstar and 2K are owned by Take-Two, suggesting that the Rockstar hacker might be behind the 2K hack as well.
The aforementioned connection, recent attacks, attributions as well as the age and location of the arrested teenager all link the arrest to Lapsus$ as confirmed by journalist Matthew Keys. Since the suspect is a minor, his name cannot be released in accordance with UK laws but he’s reportedly being charged with two computer crimes and two counts of violating bail.
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