A member of a hacking group that breached Rockstar Games has been arrested. That’s according to Dutch Police who arrested a 24-year-old man from Amsterdam.
In a post on social media, law enforcement in The Netherlands revealed that the man was arrested earlier this month appeared in court on Tuesday in relation to hacker group ShinyHunters. A statement from Neo Security via Reuters say the man has been named as Pepijn van der Stap, a offensive security lead at the Amsterdam-based firm. He is also under investigation for the attempted instigation of two murders.
He was previously convicted of data theft and extortion but has since disavowed cyber crime. ShinyHunters denies that van der Stap is associated with them.
“The Amsterdam resident is suspected of participating in a criminal organization and has been arrested for that reason. Following his arrest on September 15, a large amount of information was found on his laptop, including details about two murders that were to be committed abroad. There are indications that the suspect gave the order for this. Therefore, the man is also suspected of attempted incitement to commit two murders. That suspicion is separate from the investigation into ShinyHunters. The suspect is being held in complete isolation, and the police are conducting a thorough investigation into the allegations.”
Dutch Police
Details On The Hack
Earlier this year, Rockstar were hacked and held at ransom by a group known as ShinyHunters. A 3rd party software used by the company had been infiltrated and allowed the hackers to steal lots of very interesting documents. It was claimed 80 million files were taken.
They requested Rockstar pay them or files would be released. No payment was made and we got chance to learn how much money GTA Online makes, how many players it has and more. It was a truly fascinating look into Rockstar and their games.
Rockstar confirmed they were hacked in a statement at the time saying “a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed in connection with a third-party data breach. This incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”
ShinyHunters have named themselves as the culprits of numerous crimes. They have hacked Ticketmaster, Soundcloud, Google and even the FBI in recent weeks.
We previously wrote about how much Rockstar Games actually pay hackers each year for those who do not hold them at ransom. You can learn more about that here.
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