Back in July, I posted the story of the teenage hacker who was responsible for the attacks on Rockstar games, Uber, and revolut.
At that time, the news was that Southwark crown court had lifted reporting restrictions allowing for the identity of Arion Kurtaj to be revealed.
The update today is that court proceedings have now started in the trial of Kurtaj and an un-named 17yr old accomplice.
“The victims in this case, and they undoubtedly were victims, they were members of the public who suffered the SIM swap frauds and losses as a result of that.
There were also big corporations who were targeted and attacked.
It hasn’t been suggested by anyone that any of these attacks were just individuals out for larks and laughs.
It’s perfectly plain from the evidence that those involved in the attacks were totally serious in this endeavour of hacking companies and stealing valuable data from those companies with the intention of profiting from that, sometimes on a huge scale, whether by blackmail or fraud.”
Kevin Barry – Prosecutor
Victims devastated
The prosecution delivered a number of victim testemonies, including one man who had over £38K of cryptocurrency stolen by Kurtaj and his acomplices in the Lapsus$ hacking gang.
Accused not in court
Although accused of 12 offences, including six counts under the Computer Misuse Act, three counts of blackmail and two counts of fraud, as mentioned in my earlier post, Kurtaj has been decalred medically unfit to stand trial, so the jury must decide if Kurtaj committed the crimes he is accused of whithout his presence in the dock.
The case presented by the prosecution is due to close today, with the case offered by the defence due to start tomorrow. A ruling is exxpected by the end of the week.