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UK arrests teen-hacker days after Uber and Rockstar Games breaches

Updated on: 23 September 2022

Vilius Petkauskas
Senior Journalist

UK arrests teen-hacker days after Uber and Rockstar Games breaches

A 17-year-old hacker was arrested in Oxfordshire as part of an investigation by the UK’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU).

The City of London Police announced the arrest of a teenager on suspicion of hacking. While the authorities were light on details, infosec community insiders were quick to link the arrest with the recent hackings of Uber and Rockstar Games.

Among the first to link the arrest with recent hackings were the research group VX-Underground, assessing the City of London Police announcement as a ‘criminal arrest speed run.’

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Meanwhile, BBC’s cyber correspondent Joe Tidy went out of his way not to give out any information about the identity of the suspect, only stressing the arrest is ‘very significant.’

The arrest comes days after two breaches of major companies. On 16 September, an unknown hacker by the alias ‘Teapot’ compromised an Uber employee’s account and left messages on corporate Slack channels and Uber’s HackerOne account.

Less than a week later, allegedly, the same person penetrated Slack servers of video game giant Rockstar Games, leaking videos of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 video game, source code for GTA 5 and GTA 6, and GTA 6 testing build.

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If the arrested hacker is confirmed to be behind the Uber and Rockstar Games breaches, it will mark the second time UK teenagers have been arrested for hacking major corporations this year.

Earlier this year, a 16-year-old from Oxford, who lives with his mom, was accused of being one of the leaders of the Lapsus$ gang. Lapsus$ breached identity and access management company Okta and claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on Nvidia and Samsung.