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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.
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.
The fact he used a FireTV stick to hack Rockstar is pretty impressive lol
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.
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Prior to reading your comment, I considered myself to be a skilled software developer.
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.
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.
Counter-counterpoint: he could work as a pentester, where his sole purpose is to just break into things.
Leave the policy making and actual hardening to someone else.
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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.
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Jesus Christ, this man is a criminal Tony Starks
With the right education he could be the genius we need. Instead of prison he needs a decent mentor.
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Fucking legend
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 $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education schoo
wild
Seems like a person I like and would love to smoke a joint with, lol
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Was reading Hackaday's source article on BBC and came across this:
That did not deter the duo who continued hacking with Lapsus$ 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.
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.
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wait isnt the firestick like a chromecast? how does one even hack with that???
Its just android skinned
Its a computer. That's all a hacker needs.
Firestick's are just re-skinned android, which itself is a linux distro very basically. It's not extremely difficult to get a working terminal that can install languages and packages like a normal linux distro. I think they even have OOTB support for keyboards/mice. That said, it's a lot funnier to picture them sitting there with the remote like it's super smash.
You can connect bluetooth devices to it and run a browser, command prompt, etc. I'm thinking he used that type of stuff through the firestick.
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It is nothing more than an internet connected terminal. Once you're logged in to a server, the firestick is only sending/receiving small chunks of text.
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
How so? Someone needs to hire this kid, he sounds like he has a lot of potential.
I don't know enough about this kid from the article to argue that he's not highly skilled.
It's still a weird tangent though and reductive to blame the school system, when he doesn't even present any evidence that this was caused by some failing of the schools. Maybe you've been following this and can provide more context, but this context wasn't presented in the article.
he doesn’t even present any evidence that this was caused by some failing of the schools
The cynicism I've gained over the last 7 years tells me that there's an agenda being pushed there.
EDIT: To elaborate. I'm not arguing whether "the agenda" the author has is good or bad, but it's off-base. If you're reporting on a story, you really should leave your feelings about the story at the door. It's not like the story isn't interesting enough! If this were an op-ed, then that's one thing. But the "sensationalist reporting aside" and "we can't help feeling sad" and then pointing to... the UK's education system... it's clearly not objective. You're not presenting facts and facts alone, you're presenting facts with your opinions mixed in.
Just look at what the author invited into his comment section with that:
Not enough male teachers for these lads to confide in and see as role models.
Blatant sexism.
Yes, keep male teachers who are not woke away from kids.
Groomer accusations.
If I had to guess I would pick serious mental illness rather than a failing by the schools.
Disparaging of neurodivergence (neurodiversity? IDK if that's still the right term). Hacking into companies and bragging about it is something even neurotypical teenagers do.
bigfoot, the loch ness monster, a functional education system. list of things that don’t exist.
Anti-education screed.
As for the energy, I suspect actually getting laid, probably for the first time, would likely help.
Do I even need to say anything about this one?
You're not presenting facts and facts alone, you're presenting facts with your opinions mixed in.
Yes, that's because they aren't doing any reporting. It's commentary. That's the point of it. The actual news they're commentating is this article by the BBC. It's Hackaday, not Reuters.
I suspect our schools are failing us if we don't even know how journalism works.
I don't think it's an agenda, I think it's just poorly delivered. The facts are:
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Teen hacks corps using a Fire Stick.
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Teen has done something novel with proprietary hardware.
I think it's safe to assume that he's intelligent and creative based on those two things. With proper guidance from the right kinds of people (including parents), someone like that could eventually put those talents to use on someone's Red Team, or working with an intelligence agency, rather than doing something illegal to stretch their wings (fuck big corporations, but the law is what it is).
I don't think it's unreasonable to note that his talents will be wasted by grinding him down in the justice system.
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You caught a lot of downvotes on the original post, but it is reductive. I pretty sane conclusion but educational support probably isn't the only culprit, issues like this are multilayered and not so cut and dry.
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Yes, but kids that age like video games and will push boundaries. So I doubt even the best education could have prevented that.
To hackers hacking is far more fun than anything some school/uni/employer can come up with (until they're old enough and realize a criminal record isn't worth it).
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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.
I'm blessed by being on an instance that disables downvotes, so I hadn't even noticed haha
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Technically impressive but also fuck this kid for all his counts of spreading ransomware and stealing user data to hack their accounts too.
Never underestimate a kid with free time
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!
IIRC it looked a lot like GTA V with some debugging info added. Most changes seem to be under-the-hood.
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.
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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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