The FBI and the Department of Justice are investigating the hacking group responsible for the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak and the Uber cyberattack, while an Assassin’s Creed Mirage informant has been exposed in an account-switching mishap.
Following the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak over the weekend, reports suggest that the alleged hackers behind the cyber attack are being investigated by the FBI and the US Department of Justice in collaboration with Uber. The ride-sharing company was hit by a similar cybersecurity breach over the weekend and is working with authorities to try to find the Lapsus$ hacking group believed to be responsible for the weekend’s GTA 6 leak and the attack on Uber.
On Sunday, 18 September, a flood of videos showing footage of Grand Theft Auto 6 in development flooded social media after they were posted on a GTA forum.
Characters, settings, combat and A.I. were all featured in the 90 videos stolen from Rockstar’s Slack feeds. Following the cyberattack, Rockstar Games issued a statement confirming the authenticity of the leaks and stating that this will in no way disrupt the development of Grand Theft Auto 6 or the ongoing live service of Grand Theft Auto 5.
However, Rockstar Games was not the only company to suffer a cybersecurity breach over the weekend. Ride-sharing service Uber was also the victim of a cyber attack on 18 September, with hackers gaining access to the company’s Slack feeds in the same way as they did for Rockstar Games. Uber believes that the Lapsus$ hacker group was behind both attacks, as evidenced by the similar tactics used to hack into each company’s network and the series of Microsoft and Nvidia security breaches for which the hacker group has already claimed responsibility this year.
Uber’s recent blog post states that the company is working with the FBI and the US Department of Justice to track down and prosecute the hacker or hackers in question, related to both their and the Grand Theft Auto 6 cases.
Earlier this year, seven individuals aged between 16 and 21 linked to Lapsus$ were arrested in the UK following the hacking attacks by Microsoft and Nvidia.
According to the BBC, the hacking group is believed to have originated in South America and is only growing in prominence as time progresses. The recent Grand Theft Auto leak may be one of the group’s most famous security breaches, given its prevalence on social media; however, previous attacks against Samsung, Okta and Cisco were enough to put the group on several cybersecurity radars long before the current series of attacks.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage and the risk of multiple Twitter accounts
The leaker who first revealed the title of Assassin’s Creed Mirage recently revealed his identity after replying to a tweet from the wrong account. Leaks have been incredibly prevalent in gaming news lately, with a lot of information about Grand Theft Auto 6 leaking out after a hacker gained access to an early build from Rockstar.
Assassin’s Creed has also suffered from leaks recently.
The title of the iconic franchise’s next game, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, was leaked before Ubisoft had had a chance to confirm it, alongside some promotional images of the game. In addition, a lot of information about the Ubisoft Forward presentation focusing on Assassin’s Creed was also revealed by the same leaker who previously shared the news on Twitter as The Real Insider.
However, it turns out that this person was not actually an industry insider but a YouTuber named Dan Allen Gaming. With nearly 200,000 subscribers, Allen has quite an audience on the platform, and Ubisoft has informed him of what they will be revealed at the Ubisoft Forward launch this September. Allen learned about the show’s content under embargo, which he apparently ignored to disclose information about the future of Assassin’s Creed early.
Allen then revealed himself as The Real Insider when he used his main account to respond to a tweet addressed to the latter.
This then led to some people on the internet digging into Allen’s and The Real Insider’s tweets, which revealed that they were both tweeting about similar games simultaneously. For example, both Dan Allen’s Twitter and The Real Insider’s Twitter criticised the release of the Saints Row reboot. Eventually, this led to Allen posting an apology on Twitter, which has since been deleted, where he claimed he was taking some time to reflect on his “bad decisions”. The post below is the screenshot Allen posted to his account.
There has been no response from Ubisoft yet, but there could be severe consequences for Allen’s actions after it was revealed that he leaked information about Assassin’s Creed Mirage and some of the content that was shown at Ubisoft Forward.
@ggMikkael nose si es tema de fullHP, pero te dejo aquí lo ocurrido por mera curiosidad con TheRealInsider para que tengáis contexto xd, en resumen Jason pillo al insider, era Adán y estaba rompiendo contratos con embargo con su multicuenta. pic.twitter.com/8ywJI8FVol
— RhasegonVT (@Alain707x) September 19, 2022
UPDATE: Dan Allen has since reactivated his Twitter account and admitted his wrongdoing.
In a private response to Insider Gaming, Dan said that this is the "biggest mistake I've made and I'm utterly ashamed and remorseful". pic.twitter.com/k6MAzkRY1j
— Insider Gaming (@InsiderGamingIG) September 20, 2022
Leave a Reply