Imprisoned GTA 6 Leaker Allegedly Smuggled Phone, Claims Source Code Exists Off-Site

Arion Kurtaj, the hacker who leaked roughly 90 clips of early GTA 6 gameplay footage on September 18, 2022, has reportedly smuggled a phone into a UK prison and used it to claim that the game's source code is sitting in someone's hands, unposted and waiting.

The claims surfaced on March 8 via Snapchat photos showing Kurtaj at his cell door and on his bed, captioned: "Bro, HMP dead, waiting trial for some bullshit hacking charge." Separate alleged WhatsApp chat screenshots, first flagged publicly by X user videotechuk_ (known online as ben), showed Kurtaj messaging with two other people, one identified as Omar. In those chats, when asked about the GTA 6 source code, Kurtaj replied "Definitely somewhere," then added "Interesting, no further comment on that matter" before going quiet.

Videotechuk_ posted about the exchange without publishing the screenshots directly: "While I won't share screenshots of the WhatsApp chats (I'm sure they'll appear soon), Arion appeared surprised that the source code for Grand Theft Auto VI did not leak and seemed to imply that the source code may potentially be in the hands of someone." At least one other user who had seen the messages declined to circulate them, citing DMCA takedown concerns.

Kurtaj, who went by the handle teapotuberhacker, was 17 years old when he breached Rockstar's internal systems using nothing more than a mobile phone and an Amazon Fire Stick connected to a hotel room TV. He was already on bail for hacking when the 2022 Rockstar breach occurred, a member of the Lapsus$ group that had previously hit Nvidia, Uber, and Microsoft. Following his arrest, a court found him unfit to stand trial and issued an indefinite hospital order. In late 2023, a judge ruled he "remained a high risk to the public" after he threatened to hack Rockstar again, sentencing him to remain in a hospital prison until he was no longer considered a threat. He has since been transferred to a conventional prison, the setting for these latest reports.

If the source code claim has any substance, the stakes are real. A GTA 6 source code leak would expose Rockstar's engine architecture, allow DRM to be bypassed, and open the door to cloned animations and cheap knockoffs built from the same foundation. Whether Kurtaj is telling the truth or running another play to keep Rockstar and the community on edge is the question nobody can currently answer with certainty. Rockstar Games had not publicly commented on the claims as of the time of this reporting.