Police in London have confirmed a 17-year-old teenager, who is suspected of involvement in high-profile breaches at ride-hailing giant Uber and Rockstar Games, has been charged with multiple counts of computer misuse and breaches of bail.
The suspect, whose name was not released due to U.K. reporting restrictions on identifying non-adults, was arrested in Oxfordshire on September 22 as part of an investigation by the City of London Police, which primarily focuses on financial crimes, and supported by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency.
“The City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire [on September 22] on suspicion of hacking, as part of an investigation supported by the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU),” said Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan from the City of London Police’s Cyber Crime Unit. “He has been charged in connection with this investigation and remains in police custody.”
The police declined to say what incident the teenager’s arrest was in connection with.
Uber said last week that it believes a hacker affiliated with the Lapsus$ hacking group was responsible for its recent cyberattack, which forced the company to take several of its internal tools offline while it expelled the hacker from its network. The transportation giant said its breach may have been carried out by the same hacker that also hacked Rockstar Games, the video game publisher behind the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, which resulted in the release of dozens of videos containing unreleased footage and gameplay.
Several posts on GTAForums, an online fan forum for the Grand Theft Auto series, from a user who goes by the handle “teapotuberhacker,” claimed to be the same person responsible for Uber’s breach.
While the teenager’s identity remains unknown — and likely will for many months — the latest charges are believed to be linked to earlier arrests in March, which saw the City of London Police arrest seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 for suspected connections to the Lapsus$ hacking group. Lapsus$ was blamed for breaches at Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Samsung earlier this year.
Several of the arrested individuals were released on bail, subject to certain conditions.
At the time, Bloomberg reported that a then-16-year-old teenager based in Oxfordshire, U.K. was suspected of being the mastermind of the Lapsus$ hacking group. Four researchers investigating the gang’s recent hacks said they believed the teenager, who uses the online moniker “White” or “Breachbase,” was a leading figure in Lapsus$. Bloomberg tracked down the suspected hacker after his personal information was doxxed online, allegedly by rival hackers.