French police have arrested a 25-year-old Finnish man accused of hacking a psychotherapy clinic, stealing greater than 22,000 sufferers’ remedy notes, demanding ransom funds from them and likewise leaking this very non-public data on a Tor web site.
The suspect, who was arrested on February 3, stays in French custody whereas he awaits extradition to Finland. Whereas the Finnish police did not launch the person’s identify, infosec journalist Brian Krebs reports that he is Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, who has beforehand been convicted of “tens of 1000’s of cybercrimes.”
Finnish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in October 2022. On the identical time, Kivimäki was “arrested in absentia” by the Helsinki District Court docket for aggravated tried extortion, aggravated laptop break-in and aggravated dissemination of data violating private privateness, in line with the native cops.
The courtroom will maintain a brand new remand listening to as soon as Kivimäki is shipped again to Finland. “The intention is to interview the suspect as quickly as attainable,” Marko Leponen, detective chief inspector of the Nationwide Bureau of Investigation, stated in a statement. Leponen is main the investigation.
Again in October, Psychotherapy Heart Vastaamo admitted the info breach after sufferers’ stolen particulars began showing on the darkish net.
“In latest days, the blackmailer has printed sections of the knowledge he obtained throughout the hacking,” the Helsinki-based medical chain stated on the time. “Now the blackmailer has begun to method the victims of the breach with blackmail letters demanding a ransom.”
The now-ex CEO of Vastaamo, Ville Tapio, was later charged with knowledge safety offenses, and the psychotherapy middle declared chapter.
Oddly, by the point the Vastaamo got here clear concerning the stolen knowledge in October 2022, the breach was greater than three years outdated.
Firm chairman Tuomas Kahri informed native newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish) that “no data has been leaked since November 2018”. He added, in a press release on the clinic’s web site first issued final week, that “it’s probably that our system [was also] infiltrated between the tip of November 2018 and March 2019.”
Sufferers had been reportedly blackmailed for €200 every, and the worth tag jumped to €500 if the preliminary demand wasn’t paid inside 24 hours, in line with Krebs. Plus, as well as publishing names and call particulars, which different cybercriminals might use for id theft, the miscreant threatened to leak sufferers’ remedy session notes.
Legislation enforcement and safety researchers estimate that the criminal stole between 32,000 and 40,000 sufferers’ delicate data. As of October, 22,000 victims had reported the crime to the police.
Kivimäki additionally had the doubtful honor of being named one in every of Europol’s Most Wanted Fugitives final 12 months. ®
