• chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    The story is more interesting than the title suggests! This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.

    All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.

      Fuckin’ bravo. I mean, don’t do that, but on a purely technical level - nice.

        • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Well, between getting doxxed and annihilating any chance he had at getting a lenient sentencing, the more sensible decision would have probably been to sit on his hands and bide time for a couple months lol.

        • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          He didn’t just steal content. He then tried to blackmail the company to not release the content he stole.

          Also, while you might be able to justify piracy of a released product in various ways (the common argument is that the would be pirate wouldn’t have paid for the product anyway and digital goods don’t have any cost to the developer from pirating them). But when the product hasn’t been released yet, then it has a much bigger cost because the pirated copy is the only option available and thus it can eat into actual sales. The inability to go through with their planned launch (something big publishers will spend millions hyping) and the release of an unfinished product can absolutely have financial damages. It’s hard to recover from a bad launch.

          And that’s without getting into the fact that hackers like this don’t usually stop at just leaking video games or the likes. They’ll also often steal people’s personal information. It’s a lot easier to see the moral issues when it’s your information being stolen.

    • StarkillerX42@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Prior to reading your comment, I considered myself to be a skilled software developer.

      • KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I’m guessing those things run Linux. So you would just need a shell.

        Though I’m guessing term of his house arrest didn’t allow him to have a keyboard. That part has me curious.

        • Gadg8eer@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, the theme is “Don’t underestimate Neanderthals, they’re pretty much the granddaddy of Homo sapiens”. Or in short, “primitive, not unintelligent”.

    • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.

      that kid’s my hero

    • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It always warms my heart when a single person is able to outsmart large multi-million/billion dollar tech companies like Nvidia and Rockstar. Really shows how piss poor these companies security can be.

      I would definitely look to hire that kid with a high wage just to make sure he doesn’t hacke me again, if I were one of the companies he hacked into. Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly.

      • Mountaineer@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        I would definitely look to hire that kid with a high wage just to make sure he doesn’t hacke me again, if I were one of the companies he hacked into. Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly.

        I understand your thought, but some people just want to watch the world burn and you definitely don’t want to bring that sort inside.
        This guy seems to be driven, capable and lacking the common sense to know when to stop.

      • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly

        some companies do.

      • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Counterpoint: he got caught. Whatever his offensive capabilities are, his security posture is evidently lacking. Recruiting a glass cannon like that might not work out if you’re looking for help with security hardening.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Seems like a person I like and would love to smoke a joint with, lol

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      He bought the fire stick from the shop right next to the hotel… how the heck did he get Linux on it? Or are they selling those bootleg fire sticks?

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        He used a rented server to hack Rockstar, the FireStick was merely a means to connect to it.

    • sokz@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I feel guilty now because I bought a new monitor because my old screen space wasn’t cutting it.

    • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is a bit of a crossover ep between the movie Hackers and the DS9 ep where Julian basically got introduced to a group of obviously coded autistic anarchists.

  • treadful@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Was reading Hackaday’s source article on BBC and came across this:

    That did not deter the duo who continued hacking with Lapsus$ and successfully breached Nvidia, a Silicon Valley tech giant that makes chips for artificial intelligence chatbots, in February 2022.

    That’s a funny as fuck way of classifying Nvidia.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      It’s not inaccurate though. They do make a AI chips.

      They probably make more than than they do GPUs now. Which is depressing.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Sounds like something written by AI, ironically. That’s the most talked about thing for the moment, so that’s what it picks up on. It doesn’t care if it’s correct.

      • Auli@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        But it is correct now. Nvidia is making way more AI chips cards whatever then it is GPUs.

    • playerwhoplayyes@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nvidia now cares more about AI than gamers, and people now know more about them because the AI chips they make, I have an Nvidia GPU, but I’m looking to get an AMD GPU (Also and intel ARC will also be fine because I upgrade my power supply), I dislike Nvidia a lot now.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I like the Arc series as a concept, because they’re the only value-driven option. Nvidia is just about pumping power and AMD is about trying cool gimmicks like dual clocks and chiplets.

        Eventually I hope that the Arc series contributes to an Intel chiplet series similar to the APUs available on handhelds.

  • Echo71Niner@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    British teen from the Lapsus$ gang hacks GTA 6 details in a small town hotel room using an Amazon Fire Stick. Despite compromising British telcos, he’s exposed, caught by authorities, and leaks GTA 6 footage after using the Fire Stick to access cloud services and breach organizations. The tale highlights untapped talent and lack of support in his education system.

    • LEX@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Also highlights the fact that government agencies are doing Rockstar’s dirty work. Think you’ll ever see this level of investigation for someone’s account hacked for nudes or identity theft? Nope, only corpos worth multi-billions get expensive, in depth investigations paid for by tax dollars.

  • Quokka@quokk.au
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    1 year ago

    Technically impressive but also fuck this kid for all his counts of spreading ransomware and stealing user data to hack their accounts too.

  • xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Has anyone seen where to check the footage out?? Looks like it’s all been DMCA’d from the majority of the web… I’m not a huge GTA Stan but I kinda wanna see what got leaked!

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      It isn’t very interesting because it’s just a bunch of internal videos that people sent to each other for various reasons. And it’s all out of context because the context would have been provided in an email but we don’t ever see.

      Sometimes I’m not sure what some of the footage is trying to demonstrate.

      Also most of the animation stuff isn’t complete yet and the AI, at least in the videos I saw was brain dead. So it’s not really representative of the final product and it doesn’t really look like anything.

      • SphereofWreckening@ttrpg.network
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        1 year ago

        It did look very similar to GTA V, but it’s also worth noting that pretty much all of the footage was from very early production. It’s likely that they were using less detailed character/world models for testing purposes. I imagine the game will look pretty damn good and modern once the proper lighting and textures are applied.

        Ultimately I don’t remember anything incredibly interesting from the videos I saw outside of a couple of story beats revolving around the new main characters. It seemed like most of the videos were pretty much testing certain console and systems at non-specified points in game.

  • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    The moment of excitement in one’s hometown and the sensationalist reporting aside, we can’t help feeling sad that a teen with that level of talent evidently wasn’t given the support and encouragement by Oxfordshire’s education system necessary to put it to better use.

    What a weird conclusion for the author to draw

    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Dunno why you’re getting so many downvotes… Even if someone disagrees, it’s a pretty reasonable thing to say.

      Plus IMO it is kind of a non sequitur to say “if only the schools were better,” as though his motivations could have been satisfied with better homework assignments, lol.