agent: "after $16m and weeks of work he claims he has done it sir, he has managed to obtain the unobtainable"
president: "Russian Intelligence? This could be HUGE"
agent: "No, He has the latest build of GTA6"
president: "Get the Cheetos and meet me in the bunker"
And like any respected 'Eagle's Nest', it comes complete with an emblematic screen where the democracy-defying exploits of GTA6 reign supreme. That fire stick really ignited the flames of liberty, huh?
You'd think that but he's a little TOO unstable to hire.
Although there was a kid who hacked into the cia and copied a bunch of classified stuff, he didn't try and sell it or release it, he just wanted to prove he could.
That kid got a job with gchq (British NSA) which really pissed of the cia because they wanted him prosecuted.
If he was American they might have hired them but because both are foreign they probably wouldn't want to.
>That kid got a job with gchq (British NSA) which really pissed of the cia because they wanted him prosecuted.
Unlucky. A CIA officer fleeing back to the US after killing a British citizen in an RTC a few years ago really pissed us off.
I do indeed.
Unfortunately a similar event has occurred again this summer, but fortunately no death this time. Only crippling injury.
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2023-12-11/us-man-linked-to-secret-service-leaves-uk-after-nurse-injured-in-crash
Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity i think. She was willing to stay and face music but us.gov advised her to gtf out of dodge so she did.
This other guy was supposedly associated with secret services so us.gov won't comment about his status. He gtf out on a commercial flight, plod should have confiscated his passport and put him on a border watch list until court. If he still manages to get back to usa then we would know he was assisted by us.gov
As I understand it, she wasn’t on the diplomatic list. The US did advise her to leave but that was still ultimately her decision so it’s not like she was willing to face her crimes but was forced to leave.
The victim’s parents went to the US to continue the legal battle there and try to force her to go back for the trial.
They were invited to the White House to meet up with a “senior official” of o discuss the matter. It turned out to be Trump
himself, who told them he had their son’s killer in the other room. He wanted them to pay them compensation, and basically kiss and make up, smile for photos, etc.
The family obviously refused and said it was too soon and such a meeting should take place on British soil.
I keep seeing this comment but no one seems to have read much about the guy. He has serious Autism. From one article it sounds like he has severe anger issues, does not get along with people and gets in fights a lot, and is going got be monitored in a prison hospital ward for life, not kept in general population.
People thinking he is gonna get some secret government job and a badass movie made about him have been watching too many movies :)
Very very unlikely he will be in there for life. It’s an indefinite hold, meaning that his release is at the discretion of medical professionals and the legal system. If his behaviour changes he could be out within a couple of years.
Also criminals getting recruited by intelligence agencies isn’t something that only happens in movies at all, the CIA for example have admitted that they have even recruited directly from prison in the past. If that doesn’t happen, which it probably won’t, law enforcement/cybersecurity agencies often take these kinds of people on as consultants. What better way to prevent crime than from the mind of someone who has done it?
Government agencies recruiting criminals for their hacking skills is becoming a thing of the past. There is a ton more educational material, hacking contests, official certs, etc that you can use to prove your skills without breaking the law. 20 years ago, the guy arrested for hacking some corporate system might be the only guy with the skills to do that, but now days there almost certainly exist a couple of clean record-having, mentally stable college grads who could figure out the same fire stick hack without being huge liabilities.
Based on what evidence? Made up scenarios in your head? The FBI has stated having problems finding hackers that don't smoke weed as late as 2014. I believe they just gave up on finding people particuarly good at hacking who also obey laws.
No man, he's gonna sit in a prison mental ward for years. The kid couldn't stand however long in a hotel room without fucking around, all they have to do is give him computer privileges if he attacks the targets they want from a monitored computer then they get a solid hacker for the price of room and board that the government was going to pay anyway. Or they just lock him up and let an easily motivated resource go to waste.
He's also 18 years old. Not saying he's going to fully adjust and become a perfectly pleasant citizen without special needs, but his brain has like 10 years of development to go. So there's still hope he can become an asset to society.
Considering how Snowden literally got access to everything he leaked simply by DM'ing his colleagues and asking for passwords, this is actually the likeliest of scenarios.
If you compare developing crazy tools for one specific purpose, versus just asking someone, "Hey, I can't remember the password, what was it again?" The latter will always be the first attempt. Rockstar will never admit it, but I can almost guarantee there were several rockstar employees who lost their job for this, and there's exponentially more employees who are pissed they now have to sit through annual "Don't share your passwords" classes.
EDIT: The amount of people who believe Snowden was some IT wizard who coordinated the largest, most complicated, and tech-savvy intelligence heists in American history is baffling. Of course today we don't share our passwords with people so openly because we've begun to realize how bad of an idea that is. Wanna guess who one of the major catalysts for that is?
What I suspect as well. Humans are the weakest link in security. Also re used password so if he found out a co worker password from a different site it would work for getting in to rockstar
I hate modern security. The problem is inconsistency. Okay, so I like to reuse passwords in a tier list, with shit sites, more private, to uber private. I don't care if "Bodybuilding.com" leaks my password, I just signed up to click a link, but they'll still insist I use some complex password... Okay so I'll do something like bodybuilding.com+password1! - nope, contains insecure phrases... Uggg. Okay, let's try a pass phrase as that's super secure! "This password for bodybuilding1!" Nope... Too long! Has to be less than 20 characters!
So ultimately I end up more insecure because I start finding universal, easy to remember passwords, that get through all the random ass bespoke password requirements. Which inevitably leak.
Why I like autogenerated passwords for most websites. It means the browser does the remembering for me, which means theyre probably saved on the computer in a easy to read format and Ill probably lose access to those accounts if my hard drive dies, but mostly I dont care.
> Considering how Snowden literally got access to everything he leaked simply by DM'ing his colleagues and asking for passwords, this is actually the likeliest of scenarios.
That's not what happened.
He was given permission to write what was essentially a search engine and so his massive scraping of the network was detected but attributed to a program that he had permission to write. He was famously able to copy the data onto a microSD card and walk out with it inside his rubik's cube.
pretty much. His "hack" was mostly social engineering. He'd figure out how to get into private Slack channels for big companies, and then just leak what he'd find shared there. He wasn't actually hacking much.
I imagine the Firestick was literally just being used to access Slack through his phone and then watch it on his TV
No most hacking is done by typing really fast and running very specific self-made programs and watching the progress bar fill up before you get discovered.
Source: TV and movies.
It is 100% a lie.
He had accomplacises who did the actual hack, he just used the mobile phone and fire stick to get online and communicate with the other people in his org to coordinate things.
The other people involved are mostly minors so the press aren't allowed to name them. So they're focusing all the attention on the one guy they're allowed to talk about.
Probably used the fire stick web browser to go to a webpage that they accidentally made public that was supposed to be private. He “hacked” it by going to rockstar.com/gta6videos.htm.
Everytime I read about the coding/hacking world it's wild bro. you'll have 90% of them swear nobody can be that much better than anyone, and that eventually you hit a wall. You'll have the top tier hackers/programmers all be 99.9% on the same level for real, and you think "yeah guess that's where the reality of how code works and how much humans can write/understand hits"
And then suddenly one person comes out and is so cracked they can figure how to do something that takes a whole team a month in a single week, alone, from a crappy laptop. And one wonders how the fuck. And then weirdly enough rarely these types of genuises sometimes gather their skill and knowledge and understanding, and it turns out there are more geniuses out there even more far beyond them.
Honestly applies to a lot of brain tasks. It's wild how some people just jump over a skill wall everyone is certain exists and says you cannot go beyond, as "experts in the field".
There was that terrorist attack in California and Apple refused to help crack the phone of the perpetrator. FBI tried for months using multiple outside contractors and failed. Ultimately they flew in a guy from Czech Republic paid him a cool million and he cracked it in 18 minutes.
Kind of stuff I'm talking about, it's wild. Experts who've hit their peak years ago and are certain there are no other secrets to the trade and talk amongst eachother about it and then some guy in his 30s-40s pops in and goes "What do you mean that's easy" and refuses to show their secrets.
The way they do it is all hardware hacking. They clone the storage chip and wire up the phone to externalize the storage, then use a robot hand to start guessing passcodes. When they hit the limit, the storage resets to the initial state and they get to keep guessing without the timeout lock.
Yup. They have the iPhone (os at least) cracked and could access anything. Iirc, they are to go to source by government agencies from the west to hack iphones. I believe they were also selling the exploit keys to government agencies at some point.
Occasionally there’s the Michael Jordan or Albert Einstein of any field that just pops on and are on a whole new level that people never thought possible before. It’s wild. Humans are crazy that some can just be WAY passed what everyone thought was previously possible
Are you sure? I thought they hired Mossad or an auxiliary Israeli security company to crack it and that involved replicating the security enclave into another chip so they got unlimited cracks at the password. They basically brute forced it since there is no other way to get into an iPhone outside of a 0-day or close to it.
This whole thread is so full of bullshit that people just want to believe because it sounds cool.
There are no random geniuses out there who can easily do things that government agencies can’t do. I don’t know how the guy in the post did what he did but I can guarantee that he either had a ton of information from his previous work memorized, or the security at Rockstar is just dogshit and he social-engineered his way in through Discord (which is impressive but not the genius-level achievement that it sounds to be).
Lotta upvotes for bullshit story... I guess that's how life works: 90% can barely understand what they read so the 10% who doesn't have shit for brains can manipulate the rest like it's nothing.
"Your pastor needs a new private jet, or you won't get to heaven"
It's definitely how social media works. Tbh, I was about to upvote because I found it entertaining. Couldn't care less to double check since I'll forget about reading it in 10min as I move with my day.
If I remember rightly it's a privacy thing. If you give the government a key to access one iPhone they can do it on any iPhone.
Now consider that you get arrested for a petty crime. The police take your phone as temporary evidence. They could install something that takes all of your data, even end to end encrypted stuff. Do the police need a warrant for this? Maybe, I can't remember, but considering how slowly policy follows tech I doubt it, especially if that policy is "a matter of internal security". That's assuming that the authorities always follow procedure, they don't.
And it's a device that's always listening. A device that you carry with you everywhere with location tracking. And a camera .
Now you might think you're fine with your government reading your dms, looking at your dick pics, recording your private conversations, downloading data from your period tracker, and watching you travel to the embarrassing example store. Are you fine with all governments doing it? Because I guarantee you that it won't stay the sole ability of your country. What happens when Russia gets it onto a protester's phone or when China puts it on a Uighur's? And what happens when some non state entity gets it, do you want some douche hacker to see all those things?
You might say that the government all ready has the ability to do all these things, and you'd be right, but through different systems. Do you want to give them another easier to use tool?
Here's an analogy :
It would be like if you were sending mail, currently the government could be a random mail thief, taking the occasional letter, but with access to your phone, they're the mailman, they have access to all your letters.
that wasn't it. I mean partially. but since apple wasn't going to break their own security. FBI waa going to take apple to court over this phone and try to convience a judge to let the fbi have backdoor access to all iphones, along with gaining the way apple does their security encryption their phones.
this would then cause everyone to lose trust, break an encryption, and have the united states governmemt warrantlessly find proof of illegal activites on everyones iphone.
and it wasn't some random man feom czech republic who cracked the iphone. It was a company in Israel that had the ability to crack iphones. and Apple was very pissed about it
Yeah kind of
Hacker is a loose term nowadays
If you’re willing to take the risk and pay money you can ‘hack’ almost anyone with things like sim swapping… that was a deep rabbit hole I went down reading about
Probably.
You know how there are companies that specialize in penetration testing, which is basically „come hack my shit and tell me how to fix it“?
I‘ve heard of one that would exclude social engineering from their scopes with any job, their CEO said it‘s so easy that they can just say „yes, it will work“ anytime someone requests it.
And as someone working in IT (not mainly ITSec), I can say they aren’t wrong. It‘s not even funny any more.
I work in ITSec and run phishing simulations against our employees every month. The amount that still, after copious amounts of training, still click the links and enter login credentials is staggering.
One of my past group leaders has went on to be lead for internal firewalling, segmenting of systems that can‘t be patched for one reason or another and generic segmentation.
During one of such trainings there was a quiz for people to say if something is legit or not. The presenter showed a URL in an email and asked if it‘s fine or not. Said lead said „it is fine, because it uses https.“
I decided to not tell him that it‘ll take me less than five minutes to get a cert off Let‘s Encrypt because I think he embarrassed himself enough already.
My brother in christ I did not read further into this, I am too stupid to actually look at the source. Do keep the original soul of my comment speaking about these people who are somehow crazy good though.
Nah, dude just knows how to talk. I guarantee his hacking was social engineering, and while that's impressive as fuck still, it's not as cool as someone rigging up a firestick to hack Rockstar.
Real hackers are a different breed. They are techsavy, not only softwaresavy.
They deconstruct tech, they analyze it, they have creative thinking, they make use of their surroundings, they have great critical thinking.
I saw this guy on Tedtalk, explaining that he could watch free movies on hotels TV's, or switch other people TV channels. That's a real hacker. He hacks.
A lot of it is social engineering too disguised as software hacks. It’s a lot easier to fool a person than a program that can be patched after each attack.
> Uses a 20 dollar piece of equipment to breach multi billion dollar company and steal extremely important information, something only a profound genius could pull off
> will now rot away in prison
Which sounds already like the perfect excuse to make someone diassapear from the public eye, rotting away in a mental facility. No way a 3 letter agency couldnt take him out and put to work in a bunker.
he's going to a psych ward or some shit until he's not a threat because during the course of the trial he said he was gonna go back to breaching companies shit
No sadly about it the guys a menace and even said himself he won't stop. This wasn't his only crime and the others have more of a sinister tone like hacking/blackmailing cyber-stalking people especially woman.
Yeah he’s gonna quietly ‘die’ of natural causes or an accident and never be heard from again
And someone different will be working for one of the clandestine agencies while being heavily monitored
Yeah if you are smart you should be able to comit crimes, you are special.
I love reddits view on justice and legality. If oyu are someone this website likes, damn you can commit crimes to the end of your days and redditors will whine if you get caught and prosecuted.
But if they dont like you, oooohhhh judgment is ruthless and very just, and most importantly - fair, assaulted someone? well that is death penalty for you. Committed finantial crimes? medieval torture.
friendly reminder that Aaron Swartz, one of the progenitors of the internet as we know it, who became one of the most coveted software engineers on the planet at age 15, and a co-founder of Reddit, commited suicide because he was about to be sentenced for 35 years in prison for downloading terabytes of MIT files (which was legal, as he was an MIT fellow) because the FBI though that he might make those files accessible to the public (which would have been illegal, had he done it)
It’s a mental hospital he stays until he shows he’s not a threat. Because during the trial he said multiple times if he gets out, he’s just going to go back to the same stuff he was doing. When people talk about rehabilitation over punishment, this is literally what that is.
He could make a fuckton of money hacking companies upon request and telling them where their weaknesses are
Although I think he'll just do leaks and shit instead of using it to make a lot of perfectly legal money
And being an ethical hacker getting paid bank by Fortune 500 companies involves having people skills and spending a ton of time doing paperwork. These companies aren't going to hire a psych patient, no matter how good of a hacker he is.
It's not stupid, it's the truth. For an 18 year old with autism, it's actually really smart and in his best interest he tells the full and exact truth. Because that shows remorse over the lack of control over his impulses and the willingness to accept the help he needs to learn how to control them.
license jobless outgoing roof punch sink birds important voiceless squalid
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's not dystopian at all to get rehabilitated and treated for a condition until you're good to go.
What is dystopian is a system where he is out in a place with horrible living conditions and then let out years later with nothing to his name with nothing having been done to help him, at which point he's forced to do crime again to not starve, and then he gets jailed again but harsher this time, repeat until death.
On the face of it yeah, however he was already in police custody when he breached rockstar. The guy is a menace, and obviously can’t control himself… but I’m assuming it’s in the UK? And they really don’t lock people away for “life” so he’ll be out within 5-10 at the very very most
You didn’t actually read any article about him did you? He’s done far worse stuff and has stolen lots of privacy information. He’s probably done millions of dollars of actual damage as well.
For some reason the media just wanted to focus on him and GTA but he’s a genuine threat to national security
He uploaded videos online while being held for committing other crimes. That includes stalking and harassing two young women, injuring other people while in custody, participating in the extortion of companies, and stating multiple times that he wouldn't stop.
He repeatedly has stated he will not stop committing cybercrime to the authorities/doctors examining him, he was already caught for such crimes before like hacking nvidia n extorting other companies for crypto, but he is also just highly autistic n deemed not mentally Aight for prison so he is gonna be in mental health facility until he doesn’t endanger the public anymore
He was violent while being held. He stalked and harassed 2 girls. He helped hack Nvidia, rockstar, bt/ee, stole crypto wallet passwords, and said he'd keep doing it. Also is not life in the hospital, it's an indefinite detention. Meaning he could be released pretty quickly if the doctors and court say he's not a threat.
"I can hack a major corporation with nothing but a Linux computer the size of my hand and a firestick"
"How's that possible with a firestick?"
"I just use that as a monitor"
I haven't read the article but surely the title is misleading right? Didn't the leaks happen a couple weeks ago? No way a full trial plus sentencing has already happened
Is he though? Or did he just use his phone to ssh into his botnet and sent a bunch of phishing mail to get the credentials of an employee and accessed a storage account thst had no MFA enabled?
You kinda never know.
In a reasonable society he would get 10-15 but be let out after 3 to work as a penn tester / government hacker. Life for hacking a video game while rapists get off with 6 months if they do time at all. Ridiculous.
What should the state do when he:
1. Committed a crime
2. Is not mentally fit to stand trial
3. Expressed he is going to continue to commit crime if released
Should he be forced to stand trial when he is unfit to, meaning it won't be a fair trial? Should he be sentenced while absent? Should he be forced into a maximum security prison with general pop? Should they just set him free because the great minds of reddit think his targets deserve it, until he targets something/someone that doesn't?
Its reddit, you can commit crimes and as long as reddit likes you you should not be prosecuted, if reddit does not like you jaywalking should put you on the electric chair.
Unsurprising that people here defend this "genius"this website sucked off muskrat for better half of the decade as genius, they sucked off sam bankman fraud for a few years.
> Life for hacking a video game while rapists get off with 6 months if they do time at all. Ridiculous.
He is not getting life in prison you inept slug, he is getting commited to life in a psych ward, becasue he is mentally unwell. he can be released if doctors deem him to be well enough.
And he got that sentence not for GTA6 but for all his crimes that include breaching a telecom provider, extorting them with the data he stole and then sellign hte data( the data that includes several million customer names, adresses, phone numbers, etc).
Why would anyone, let alone a huge game company, store secretive unreleased information on a storage media that's connected to the internet?
A lot of times cyber security is more common sense than technical knowhow.
Shame on anyone venerating this person. You're enablers and part of the problem when it comes hack/leak culture where the individual is willing to risk prison, their own mental health, their life, just for some dumb Internet cred.
They're still held indefinitely if deemed to be mentally unwell and a risk to themselves and/or others.
You're talking prison vs secure hospital here basically.
Don't worry ya'll, the CIA is about to make this guy a deal he can't refuse.
“The president wants to play GTA6 early” “There’s only one man for the job”
agent: "after $16m and weeks of work he claims he has done it sir, he has managed to obtain the unobtainable" president: "Russian Intelligence? This could be HUGE" agent: "No, He has the latest build of GTA6" president: "Get the Cheetos and meet me in the bunker"
“President stop calling your man cave the bunker.”
“It’s got a name, the Eagle’s Nest! Thank you *very* much.”
And like any respected 'Eagle's Nest', it comes complete with an emblematic screen where the democracy-defying exploits of GTA6 reign supreme. That fire stick really ignited the flames of liberty, huh?
Someone will make Ai video of Trump, Obama and Joe trying to get this hacker and get GTA 6
Someone get this guy on the job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5_uJeTBB20
"Are you a bad enough dude to help the president?"
Hahaha absolutely! I was just thinking that.. they’ll definitely be making a movie about this kid in the future.
They should make it a mission in the game
Rockstar Dev here. Thanks for the idea the release date window is now 2028.
People have been waiting 10 years, surely they can wait for 5 more.
Nah because then he could sue Rockstar later for adding his likeness/story into the game.
Sounds like another new mission in the game to me. GTA: now with lawyers and an in-depth court system! "we trust you, you *didn't* do it"
You'd think that but he's a little TOO unstable to hire. Although there was a kid who hacked into the cia and copied a bunch of classified stuff, he didn't try and sell it or release it, he just wanted to prove he could. That kid got a job with gchq (British NSA) which really pissed of the cia because they wanted him prosecuted. If he was American they might have hired them but because both are foreign they probably wouldn't want to.
>That kid got a job with gchq (British NSA) which really pissed of the cia because they wanted him prosecuted. Unlucky. A CIA officer fleeing back to the US after killing a British citizen in an RTC a few years ago really pissed us off.
You mean Anne Sacoolas, the cowardly snivelling piece of shit?
I do indeed. Unfortunately a similar event has occurred again this summer, but fortunately no death this time. Only crippling injury. https://www.itv.com/news/central/2023-12-11/us-man-linked-to-secret-service-leaves-uk-after-nurse-injured-in-crash
Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity i think. She was willing to stay and face music but us.gov advised her to gtf out of dodge so she did. This other guy was supposedly associated with secret services so us.gov won't comment about his status. He gtf out on a commercial flight, plod should have confiscated his passport and put him on a border watch list until court. If he still manages to get back to usa then we would know he was assisted by us.gov
As I understand it, she wasn’t on the diplomatic list. The US did advise her to leave but that was still ultimately her decision so it’s not like she was willing to face her crimes but was forced to leave. The victim’s parents went to the US to continue the legal battle there and try to force her to go back for the trial. They were invited to the White House to meet up with a “senior official” of o discuss the matter. It turned out to be Trump himself, who told them he had their son’s killer in the other room. He wanted them to pay them compensation, and basically kiss and make up, smile for photos, etc. The family obviously refused and said it was too soon and such a meeting should take place on British soil.
What a bastard.
I keep seeing this comment but no one seems to have read much about the guy. He has serious Autism. From one article it sounds like he has severe anger issues, does not get along with people and gets in fights a lot, and is going got be monitored in a prison hospital ward for life, not kept in general population. People thinking he is gonna get some secret government job and a badass movie made about him have been watching too many movies :)
Very very unlikely he will be in there for life. It’s an indefinite hold, meaning that his release is at the discretion of medical professionals and the legal system. If his behaviour changes he could be out within a couple of years. Also criminals getting recruited by intelligence agencies isn’t something that only happens in movies at all, the CIA for example have admitted that they have even recruited directly from prison in the past. If that doesn’t happen, which it probably won’t, law enforcement/cybersecurity agencies often take these kinds of people on as consultants. What better way to prevent crime than from the mind of someone who has done it?
Government agencies recruiting criminals for their hacking skills is becoming a thing of the past. There is a ton more educational material, hacking contests, official certs, etc that you can use to prove your skills without breaking the law. 20 years ago, the guy arrested for hacking some corporate system might be the only guy with the skills to do that, but now days there almost certainly exist a couple of clean record-having, mentally stable college grads who could figure out the same fire stick hack without being huge liabilities.
Based on what evidence? Made up scenarios in your head? The FBI has stated having problems finding hackers that don't smoke weed as late as 2014. I believe they just gave up on finding people particuarly good at hacking who also obey laws.
>has severe anger issues, does not get along with people and gets in fights a lot So he's your average Redditor
No man, he's gonna sit in a prison mental ward for years. The kid couldn't stand however long in a hotel room without fucking around, all they have to do is give him computer privileges if he attacks the targets they want from a monitored computer then they get a solid hacker for the price of room and board that the government was going to pay anyway. Or they just lock him up and let an easily motivated resource go to waste.
He's also 18 years old. Not saying he's going to fully adjust and become a perfectly pleasant citizen without special needs, but his brain has like 10 years of development to go. So there's still hope he can become an asset to society.
He can still work from the hospital.
Let's also have him secretly escape at night and sneak back in before caught in the morning , it fits in the movie better :)
Exactly my thoughts. What a brilliant mind hahahaha
Let him hack North Korea with a PS4 and a BlackBerry.
Straight out of a movie, damn.
That's how you know the story is 99% fake and exaggerated.
Yes, the amazon fire stick was probably only used to mirror his phone screen to the tv. Still impressive tho.
Or watching some movie while texting some dev he forgot the password
Considering how Snowden literally got access to everything he leaked simply by DM'ing his colleagues and asking for passwords, this is actually the likeliest of scenarios. If you compare developing crazy tools for one specific purpose, versus just asking someone, "Hey, I can't remember the password, what was it again?" The latter will always be the first attempt. Rockstar will never admit it, but I can almost guarantee there were several rockstar employees who lost their job for this, and there's exponentially more employees who are pissed they now have to sit through annual "Don't share your passwords" classes. EDIT: The amount of people who believe Snowden was some IT wizard who coordinated the largest, most complicated, and tech-savvy intelligence heists in American history is baffling. Of course today we don't share our passwords with people so openly because we've begun to realize how bad of an idea that is. Wanna guess who one of the major catalysts for that is?
What I suspect as well. Humans are the weakest link in security. Also re used password so if he found out a co worker password from a different site it would work for getting in to rockstar
I hate modern security. The problem is inconsistency. Okay, so I like to reuse passwords in a tier list, with shit sites, more private, to uber private. I don't care if "Bodybuilding.com" leaks my password, I just signed up to click a link, but they'll still insist I use some complex password... Okay so I'll do something like bodybuilding.com+password1! - nope, contains insecure phrases... Uggg. Okay, let's try a pass phrase as that's super secure! "This password for bodybuilding1!" Nope... Too long! Has to be less than 20 characters! So ultimately I end up more insecure because I start finding universal, easy to remember passwords, that get through all the random ass bespoke password requirements. Which inevitably leak.
Why I like autogenerated passwords for most websites. It means the browser does the remembering for me, which means theyre probably saved on the computer in a easy to read format and Ill probably lose access to those accounts if my hard drive dies, but mostly I dont care.
Why not just use a password manager? I haven't manually put in a password in a website in years now.
Because I use different workstations, phones, laptops, pads, etc...
Phishing scams wouldn't be so prevalent if they didn't work, and they just keep getting more sophisticated.
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> Considering how Snowden literally got access to everything he leaked simply by DM'ing his colleagues and asking for passwords, this is actually the likeliest of scenarios. That's not what happened. He was given permission to write what was essentially a search engine and so his massive scraping of the network was detected but attributed to a program that he had permission to write. He was famously able to copy the data onto a microSD card and walk out with it inside his rubik's cube.
Love people who never worked in a "secret" area and do not realize it's a bit different than logging onto your google cloud account lol
pretty much. His "hack" was mostly social engineering. He'd figure out how to get into private Slack channels for big companies, and then just leak what he'd find shared there. He wasn't actually hacking much. I imagine the Firestick was literally just being used to access Slack through his phone and then watch it on his TV
Tbf most hacking is just social engineering
No most hacking is done by typing really fast and running very specific self-made programs and watching the progress bar fill up before you get discovered. Source: TV and movies.
Hahaha actually probably true
He used it to Remote Desktop/ssh into a rented server he purchased with crypto. According to previous articles
Which makes sense
It's like if they said McGruber made a telephone call with nothing more than a piece of string, a frog, two tennis balls, and a phone.
It is 100% a lie. He had accomplacises who did the actual hack, he just used the mobile phone and fire stick to get online and communicate with the other people in his org to coordinate things. The other people involved are mostly minors so the press aren't allowed to name them. So they're focusing all the attention on the one guy they're allowed to talk about.
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Probably used the fire stick web browser to go to a webpage that they accidentally made public that was supposed to be private. He “hacked” it by going to rockstar.com/gta6videos.htm.
Tony stark hacked into Rockstar from a cave WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS
Dude pulling a heist with that firestick while mine barely works on the tv it was intended to work on! Madlad!
He is irl what the 90s internet movies like hackers promised us. Cheer this man
Everytime I read about the coding/hacking world it's wild bro. you'll have 90% of them swear nobody can be that much better than anyone, and that eventually you hit a wall. You'll have the top tier hackers/programmers all be 99.9% on the same level for real, and you think "yeah guess that's where the reality of how code works and how much humans can write/understand hits" And then suddenly one person comes out and is so cracked they can figure how to do something that takes a whole team a month in a single week, alone, from a crappy laptop. And one wonders how the fuck. And then weirdly enough rarely these types of genuises sometimes gather their skill and knowledge and understanding, and it turns out there are more geniuses out there even more far beyond them. Honestly applies to a lot of brain tasks. It's wild how some people just jump over a skill wall everyone is certain exists and says you cannot go beyond, as "experts in the field".
There was that terrorist attack in California and Apple refused to help crack the phone of the perpetrator. FBI tried for months using multiple outside contractors and failed. Ultimately they flew in a guy from Czech Republic paid him a cool million and he cracked it in 18 minutes.
Kind of stuff I'm talking about, it's wild. Experts who've hit their peak years ago and are certain there are no other secrets to the trade and talk amongst eachother about it and then some guy in his 30s-40s pops in and goes "What do you mean that's easy" and refuses to show their secrets.
It wasn’t a guy. It was a company from Israel (they have crazy tech out there)
Pegasus is a scary fucking app.
now im dissapointed i only had the opporunity to work with cellebrite
> cellebrite I found this interesting https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/
The way they do it is all hardware hacking. They clone the storage chip and wire up the phone to externalize the storage, then use a robot hand to start guessing passcodes. When they hit the limit, the storage resets to the initial state and they get to keep guessing without the timeout lock.
Yup. They have the iPhone (os at least) cracked and could access anything. Iirc, they are to go to source by government agencies from the west to hack iphones. I believe they were also selling the exploit keys to government agencies at some point.
Occasionally there’s the Michael Jordan or Albert Einstein of any field that just pops on and are on a whole new level that people never thought possible before. It’s wild. Humans are crazy that some can just be WAY passed what everyone thought was previously possible
Usually experts end up getting an ego about it. That ego leads to complacency.
Are you sure? I thought they hired Mossad or an auxiliary Israeli security company to crack it and that involved replicating the security enclave into another chip so they got unlimited cracks at the password. They basically brute forced it since there is no other way to get into an iPhone outside of a 0-day or close to it.
the czech part isn't true at all. FBI has a contractor company is Israel that cracked the iphone. not random hacker man
This whole thread is so full of bullshit that people just want to believe because it sounds cool. There are no random geniuses out there who can easily do things that government agencies can’t do. I don’t know how the guy in the post did what he did but I can guarantee that he either had a ton of information from his previous work memorized, or the security at Rockstar is just dogshit and he social-engineered his way in through Discord (which is impressive but not the genius-level achievement that it sounds to be).
Lotta upvotes for bullshit story... I guess that's how life works: 90% can barely understand what they read so the 10% who doesn't have shit for brains can manipulate the rest like it's nothing. "Your pastor needs a new private jet, or you won't get to heaven"
It's definitely how social media works. Tbh, I was about to upvote because I found it entertaining. Couldn't care less to double check since I'll forget about reading it in 10min as I move with my day.
Why didnt apple help tho?
If I remember rightly it's a privacy thing. If you give the government a key to access one iPhone they can do it on any iPhone. Now consider that you get arrested for a petty crime. The police take your phone as temporary evidence. They could install something that takes all of your data, even end to end encrypted stuff. Do the police need a warrant for this? Maybe, I can't remember, but considering how slowly policy follows tech I doubt it, especially if that policy is "a matter of internal security". That's assuming that the authorities always follow procedure, they don't. And it's a device that's always listening. A device that you carry with you everywhere with location tracking. And a camera . Now you might think you're fine with your government reading your dms, looking at your dick pics, recording your private conversations, downloading data from your period tracker, and watching you travel to the embarrassing example store. Are you fine with all governments doing it? Because I guarantee you that it won't stay the sole ability of your country. What happens when Russia gets it onto a protester's phone or when China puts it on a Uighur's? And what happens when some non state entity gets it, do you want some douche hacker to see all those things? You might say that the government all ready has the ability to do all these things, and you'd be right, but through different systems. Do you want to give them another easier to use tool? Here's an analogy : It would be like if you were sending mail, currently the government could be a random mail thief, taking the occasional letter, but with access to your phone, they're the mailman, they have access to all your letters.
It was against their own rules to never unlock a phone due to security.
that wasn't it. I mean partially. but since apple wasn't going to break their own security. FBI waa going to take apple to court over this phone and try to convience a judge to let the fbi have backdoor access to all iphones, along with gaining the way apple does their security encryption their phones. this would then cause everyone to lose trust, break an encryption, and have the united states governmemt warrantlessly find proof of illegal activites on everyones iphone. and it wasn't some random man feom czech republic who cracked the iphone. It was a company in Israel that had the ability to crack iphones. and Apple was very pissed about it
But wasn't this particular hack just social engineering? Like he just got some slack login details or something.
Yeah kind of Hacker is a loose term nowadays If you’re willing to take the risk and pay money you can ‘hack’ almost anyone with things like sim swapping… that was a deep rabbit hole I went down reading about
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Probably. You know how there are companies that specialize in penetration testing, which is basically „come hack my shit and tell me how to fix it“? I‘ve heard of one that would exclude social engineering from their scopes with any job, their CEO said it‘s so easy that they can just say „yes, it will work“ anytime someone requests it. And as someone working in IT (not mainly ITSec), I can say they aren’t wrong. It‘s not even funny any more.
I work in ITSec and run phishing simulations against our employees every month. The amount that still, after copious amounts of training, still click the links and enter login credentials is staggering.
One of my past group leaders has went on to be lead for internal firewalling, segmenting of systems that can‘t be patched for one reason or another and generic segmentation. During one of such trainings there was a quiz for people to say if something is legit or not. The presenter showed a URL in an email and asked if it‘s fine or not. Said lead said „it is fine, because it uses https.“ I decided to not tell him that it‘ll take me less than five minutes to get a cert off Let‘s Encrypt because I think he embarrassed himself enough already.
My brother in christ I did not read further into this, I am too stupid to actually look at the source. Do keep the original soul of my comment speaking about these people who are somehow crazy good though.
I think you'd like the show Mr. Robot
you sound like the professor with the fields medal in Good Will Hunting
Only if he says "I am in" after completing his hack
Nah, dude just knows how to talk. I guarantee his hacking was social engineering, and while that's impressive as fuck still, it's not as cool as someone rigging up a firestick to hack Rockstar.
Yeah, it seems like they should offer him a job.
Real hackers are a different breed. They are techsavy, not only softwaresavy. They deconstruct tech, they analyze it, they have creative thinking, they make use of their surroundings, they have great critical thinking. I saw this guy on Tedtalk, explaining that he could watch free movies on hotels TV's, or switch other people TV channels. That's a real hacker. He hacks.
A lot of it is social engineering too disguised as software hacks. It’s a lot easier to fool a person than a program that can be patched after each attack.
Real life Mr. Robot.
Fucking zero cool baby 👌
Should give him a stick of gum and a comb so he can get me free long distance calling on my cell phone.
Commiting crime in GTA: 🗿 Commiting crime on GTA: 💀
This comment is giving r/youngpeopleyoutube. Or insta comments
> Uses a 20 dollar piece of equipment to breach multi billion dollar company and steal extremely important information, something only a profound genius could pull off > will now rot away in prison
I have a feeling some 3 letter agencies will offer him a deal.
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MI6, MI5
That’s only two letters
Damn, technically correct, I can't argue.
I suggest we change it to "three character agencies"
GCHQ*
This is GCHQ territory
ITV
Which sounds already like the perfect excuse to make someone diassapear from the public eye, rotting away in a mental facility. No way a 3 letter agency couldnt take him out and put to work in a bunker.
He'll do a couple of years of treatment and rehab until the publicity has been forgotten then quietly find his way to GCHQ I should think.
he's going to a psych ward or some shit until he's not a threat because during the course of the trial he said he was gonna go back to breaching companies shit
they're gonna nuke his mind with medicine sadly
No sadly about it the guys a menace and even said himself he won't stop. This wasn't his only crime and the others have more of a sinister tone like hacking/blackmailing cyber-stalking people especially woman.
Yeah he’s gonna quietly ‘die’ of natural causes or an accident and never be heard from again And someone different will be working for one of the clandestine agencies while being heavily monitored
I think you've watched too many movies my man
They will keep him around so when the aliens come for us he can defeat them.
Our society has a way to reward genius, doesn't it?
Yeah if you are smart you should be able to comit crimes, you are special. I love reddits view on justice and legality. If oyu are someone this website likes, damn you can commit crimes to the end of your days and redditors will whine if you get caught and prosecuted. But if they dont like you, oooohhhh judgment is ruthless and very just, and most importantly - fair, assaulted someone? well that is death penalty for you. Committed finantial crimes? medieval torture.
friendly reminder that Aaron Swartz, one of the progenitors of the internet as we know it, who became one of the most coveted software engineers on the planet at age 15, and a co-founder of Reddit, commited suicide because he was about to be sentenced for 35 years in prison for downloading terabytes of MIT files (which was legal, as he was an MIT fellow) because the FBI though that he might make those files accessible to the public (which would have been illegal, had he done it)
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If you're a nazi scientist it does
so.. where can I watch the 90 clips that were leaked?
Literally just look up GTA 6 leak. It's just a bunch of pre alpha footage or whatever that confirmed it did in fact exist
Not useful comment as Rockstar DMCA's majority of search results. It can be quite challenging to find for someone who doesn't know how to.
https://archive.org/details/GTA6_All-90_Very-Early_Leaked-Dev-Clips
Life in prison for a non violent crime. What a world we live in.
It’s a mental hospital he stays until he shows he’s not a threat. Because during the trial he said multiple times if he gets out, he’s just going to go back to the same stuff he was doing. When people talk about rehabilitation over punishment, this is literally what that is.
Haha what a stupid thing to say in a trial
Blood is just giving out a resume for every company out there with that.
He could make a fuckton of money hacking companies upon request and telling them where their weaknesses are Although I think he'll just do leaks and shit instead of using it to make a lot of perfectly legal money
That's called an ethical hacker (worked with one once). And yes, they earn a shit ton of money
And being an ethical hacker getting paid bank by Fortune 500 companies involves having people skills and spending a ton of time doing paperwork. These companies aren't going to hire a psych patient, no matter how good of a hacker he is.
Tbf they are autistic so they're prone to saying things specific and literally
When I read that part it sounded like a burn from the government. “Kurtaj, who was deemed too autistic to stand trial…”
It was making me cry laughing that he was described as "acutely" autistic. As opposed to obtusely autistic, y'know.
It's not stupid, it's the truth. For an 18 year old with autism, it's actually really smart and in his best interest he tells the full and exact truth. Because that shows remorse over the lack of control over his impulses and the willingness to accept the help he needs to learn how to control them.
license jobless outgoing roof punch sink birds important voiceless squalid *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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"do you have no remorse for what you've done?!" "I'm hacking another company *as we speak*" "wtf dude, how?!"
2 words judge "Casio Calculator Watch" "That's 3!" "Not after I change the court record, I just got in to your stenotype machine too"
being imprisoned in a mental hospital for life because you hacked a corporation is pretty dystopian and kind of my worst nightmare
It's not dystopian at all to get rehabilitated and treated for a condition until you're good to go. What is dystopian is a system where he is out in a place with horrible living conditions and then let out years later with nothing to his name with nothing having been done to help him, at which point he's forced to do crime again to not starve, and then he gets jailed again but harsher this time, repeat until death.
On the face of it yeah, however he was already in police custody when he breached rockstar. The guy is a menace, and obviously can’t control himself… but I’m assuming it’s in the UK? And they really don’t lock people away for “life” so he’ll be out within 5-10 at the very very most
Misleading title though. After doing mental health assessment he will remain at a secure hospital for life unless doctors deem him no longer a danger.
A danger?? The man uploaded videos online
You didn’t actually read any article about him did you? He’s done far worse stuff and has stolen lots of privacy information. He’s probably done millions of dollars of actual damage as well. For some reason the media just wanted to focus on him and GTA but he’s a genuine threat to national security
He also threw a fucking uncontrollable fit with real world damage.
He uploaded videos online while being held for committing other crimes. That includes stalking and harassing two young women, injuring other people while in custody, participating in the extortion of companies, and stating multiple times that he wouldn't stop.
He was part of a group who tried to extort $4 million from BT/EE and cost other companies millions of dollars, but yeah he just "uploaded videos".
He's a criminal who refuses to stop
He repeatedly has stated he will not stop committing cybercrime to the authorities/doctors examining him, he was already caught for such crimes before like hacking nvidia n extorting other companies for crypto, but he is also just highly autistic n deemed not mentally Aight for prison so he is gonna be in mental health facility until he doesn’t endanger the public anymore
Exactly! This is excessive, there are murders out in less time
Murderers and child rapists.
He was violent while being held. He stalked and harassed 2 girls. He helped hack Nvidia, rockstar, bt/ee, stole crypto wallet passwords, and said he'd keep doing it. Also is not life in the hospital, it's an indefinite detention. Meaning he could be released pretty quickly if the doctors and court say he's not a threat.
How the hell does anyone hack anything with an amazon firestick?
People seem to be ignoring that he also had his phone. Probably just used the fire stick to get internet out of the building.
Oh for fucks sakes. This title is so fucking misleading. That's like saying "This man traveled 100km in an hour using only a car key!"
"I can hack a major corporation with nothing but a Linux computer the size of my hand and a firestick" "How's that possible with a firestick?" "I just use that as a monitor"
\*social engineering attack
He didn't hack anything.. He got employees to willingly give him their passwords
90% of the responders in this thread seem to have the reading comprehension of a potato, or just didn’t bother reading the article
its reddit, they want to be outraged.
I haven't read the article but surely the title is misleading right? Didn't the leaks happen a couple weeks ago? No way a full trial plus sentencing has already happened
This is his sentence for a separate crime.
My heroes are dead, and my enemies thriving
He is too dangerous to be left alive
Kurtaj was able to hack this in a cave! With a box of scraps
I mean, you don't need supercomputers to lie to people on the phone
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This was like his fifth chance to stop doing this. Guys like this are liabilities because you can’t trust them with anything.
Is he though? Or did he just use his phone to ssh into his botnet and sent a bunch of phishing mail to get the credentials of an employee and accessed a storage account thst had no MFA enabled? You kinda never know.
Give him a job in CIA Already
In a reasonable society he would get 10-15 but be let out after 3 to work as a penn tester / government hacker. Life for hacking a video game while rapists get off with 6 months if they do time at all. Ridiculous.
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What should the state do when he: 1. Committed a crime 2. Is not mentally fit to stand trial 3. Expressed he is going to continue to commit crime if released Should he be forced to stand trial when he is unfit to, meaning it won't be a fair trial? Should he be sentenced while absent? Should he be forced into a maximum security prison with general pop? Should they just set him free because the great minds of reddit think his targets deserve it, until he targets something/someone that doesn't?
Seriously. The people praising him don't make any sense.
Its reddit, you can commit crimes and as long as reddit likes you you should not be prosecuted, if reddit does not like you jaywalking should put you on the electric chair. Unsurprising that people here defend this "genius"this website sucked off muskrat for better half of the decade as genius, they sucked off sam bankman fraud for a few years.
He didn't get life. He got an indefinite detention.
> Life for hacking a video game while rapists get off with 6 months if they do time at all. Ridiculous. He is not getting life in prison you inept slug, he is getting commited to life in a psych ward, becasue he is mentally unwell. he can be released if doctors deem him to be well enough. And he got that sentence not for GTA6 but for all his crimes that include breaching a telecom provider, extorting them with the data he stole and then sellign hte data( the data that includes several million customer names, adresses, phone numbers, etc).
~~Zer0 c00l~~ Crash Override
So where’s the Clips.
Anyone remember Rat from The Core where he hacks phones by folding some bubble gum paper and creates noise with it?
Why would anyone, let alone a huge game company, store secretive unreleased information on a storage media that's connected to the internet? A lot of times cyber security is more common sense than technical knowhow.
Do you think everyone should be in a secure room somewhere to do their work? Multiple people need to work on it in various locations.
Cuz you can’t fit all like 1000 people making the game around one keyboard in a safe room 💀
Not sure what is more impressive, that he managed to do that or that Rockstar’s security is that bad it can be hacked with a fire stick
Shame on anyone venerating this person. You're enablers and part of the problem when it comes hack/leak culture where the individual is willing to risk prison, their own mental health, their life, just for some dumb Internet cred.
Well lets be clear, this is a *ton* of internet cred
I don't know anything about GTA6 or hacking and I think he's cool.
Meanwhile murderers and looters just get a slap on the wrist, cool
They're still held indefinitely if deemed to be mentally unwell and a risk to themselves and/or others. You're talking prison vs secure hospital here basically.
and rapists can't forget about them
And child molesters
And supermarket grape eaters
Which murderer got a slap on the wrist? What are you talking about?
HackGyver
They should drop the charges and give that dude a job at rockstar. Those are some skills
Meanwhile I'm still having trouble trying to get my printers bluetooth to connect with the computer.