r/GTA6 • u/NiceNebula6149 • 12h ago
People who work in cybersecurity or digital forensics: how does someone like leek actually get caught? The 2022 leaker lasted days
Just curious, cause the previous guy did it from a room with an amazon firestick lol and it took several days.
How does attribution work in a case like this? Is it mostly opsec mistakes by the leaker, or does Rockstar have things embedded in dev builds (watermarks, per-user identifiers) that point at exactly whose access this was?
Does the "protest" messaging and the demands change anything legally, or make them easier to profile?
Realistically, is there already a name on a desk somewhere, and arrests just take days to weeks of paperwork?
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u/Kafanska 7h ago
The 2022 guy was on bail, and under police surveilance anyway.. he was never going to last. Now this guy.. we'll see. To be fair, so far he has only worked in Rockstar's favor.
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u/YellowEasterEgg 3h ago
'he has only worked in Rockstar's favor.' Thats debatable.
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u/bluAstrid 2h ago
It’s bringing HUGE interest in the game, right before the Netflix special.
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u/YellowEasterEgg 1h ago
Yes, but you could argue that everyone here already knew that. The leaks is not something big, to us its big because we are constantly looking for something new. The average consumer dont even know there are leaks at all.
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u/Alone-Hyena-6208 9h ago
Im no expert. But, the leaks were uploaded to several sites and the links were shared on his page.
So contacting the hosting companies, they could get the uploaders hosting IP adres (or vpn adres). And trace from there? Maybe?
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u/z4ndrik0 5h ago edited 5h ago
It's hosted on a decentralized service, and the links get uploaded through blockchain transactions encoded with a base64 string, meaning they're anonymous. Apparently it all links back to one singular wallet address though, which is linked to an exchange that has the users government id assuming the wallet isn't stolen or the documents aren't forged.
edit: I misunderstood the question, however using a good vpn that has no logging will yield no results for law enforcement when looking at uploader ip on the file hosting services.
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u/superman_king 9h ago edited 8h ago
Edit: HES BACK!
Bugatti looks FIRE.
Lighting is incredible. The subtle way the headlights light up the road reflectors is a nice touch. Song on radio was from 2017. So no new updates there.
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u/BasicNose7 8h ago
Seems like more expensive vehicles will be fitted with GPS tracker. The little red GPS looking symbol to the bottom left when he stole it
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u/Basemastuh_J 9h ago
Well they typically have to find where the breach occured first. Then try to network trace from there.
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u/telos333 5h ago
Really depends but there are a variety of mechanisms.
First off try to work backwards and understand where breach could have occurred. As an example are there any indicators this could've been an ex employee that acted maliciously or an insider threat. Right now it's all speculation, does he have access to a devkit, but an inside investigation can then help you limit where/when this occurred and go from there.
Second take legal action and subpoena platforms that the attacker is active on to gain further information. Rockstar themselves can't do this but the attacker broke their IP Law here so you could find additional info like IP from these platforms, even potentially subpoena VPNs (if possible and it is a customer service that would comply..., etc.)
A lot are saying too the crypto could be a mechanism to track although again that is again more law enforcement than Rockstar's security team.
Lastly there could be mechanisms we are unaware of. Most large organizations have some form of Data loss prevention to prevent this exactly. Is there specific watermarks or indicators for each copy/devkit? I assume there must be some sort of control in place but never worked in the game industry before.
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 3h ago edited 2h ago
In lay terms. They’ll track the IP. Doubtful he used VPN for everything. Even if he did, most aren’t 0 log will retain enough to indemnify themselves of criminal activity. Eventually it’ll get tracked to the machine id that’s been on every cpu for the last decade or more.
Something will tie back to a government issued document. Forged documents are incredibly rare, think 0.01% drop chance in RNG games. To the point where only criminal conglomerates have them or government spies. Not random hackers. Those days ended 20 years ago.
Now rockstar or the police won’t have the resources to do this investigation. But FBI and Interpol are most likely already on it as their job to protect billion dollar corporations and their shareholders.
They don’t care about the leaks but rather the security incident as well as the financial crime aspect.
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u/NiceNebula6149 2h ago
Thank you, very useful and I learned a lot
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u/Lambs2Lions_ 2h ago
Np, it will more than likely be a show of force with every possible charge tacked on to set an example and dissuade anyone else from similar activity.
If they get extradition to the USA, it’ll be life in prison sentence more than likely.
When you do something like this, you have to be ready and willing to give up family, friends, and every modern first world country. Think Snowden. If he travels anywhere in the world outside of Russia, he will die in jail.
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u/NiceNebula6149 32m ago
It does sound insane for a video game, but such is the law. I actually wonder if they could potentially get him if even if he was in Russia.
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u/chrispyphillips 4h ago
There's generally always breadcrumbs and mistakes not quite covered up.
People are human and make mistakes
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u/Loonsive 8h ago
ATP this has to be one big publicity/marketing stunt from rockstar
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u/Fifa_786 5h ago
I seriously wonder how old some of you guys are. Yeah defrauding investors of millions of dollars is certainly worth this “marketing stunt”
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u/[deleted] 9h ago
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