Finland’s Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed in France
Summary: Julius "Zeekill" Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients, was arrested in France on Feb. 3 after police in Courbevoie responded to a domestic violence report and identified him despite a Romanian ID. He had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to appear in court and Finland issued an international warrant; he was previously convicted of orchestrating more than 50,000 cybercrimes and received a 2-year suspended sentence as a 17-year-old.
What you should know: The Vastaamo breach put the psychotherapy records of more than 22,000 patients on the dark web, and the suspect was only caught because he included his own home folder - private SSH keys and known hosts - in the uploaded archive. Finnish police say they expect extradition to proceed smoothly, but the earlier 2-year suspended sentence for 50,000-plus crimes is the precedent a security leader should weigh when estimating what a conviction actually costs an attacker.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Ransomware
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