Finland's Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed In France (krebsonsecurity.com) 17
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Julius "Zeekill" Kivimaki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimaki had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to show up in court and Finland issued an international warrant for his arrest. [...] According to the French news site actu.fr, Kivimaki was arrested around 7 a.m. on Feb. 3, after authorities in Courbevoie responded to a domestic violence report. Kivimaki had been out earlier with a woman at a local nightclub, and later the two returned to her home but reportedly got into a heated argument. Police responding to the scene were admitted by another woman -- possibly a roommate -- and found the man inside still sleeping off a long night. When they roused him and asked for identification, the 6 3 blonde, green-eyed man presented an ID that stated he was of Romanian nationality. The French police were doubtful. After consulting records on most-wanted criminals, they quickly identified the man as Kivimaki and took him into custody.
Kivimaki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimaki's involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP. Finnish police said Kivimaki also used the nicknames "Ryan", "RyanC" and "Ryan Cleary" (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group -- LulzSec -- who was sentenced to prison for hacking). Kivimaki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimaki's alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimaki was 15 years old at the time. In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimaki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe's ColdFusion software.
Multiple law enforcement sources told KrebsOnSecurity that Kivimaki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. That incident was widely reported to have started with a tweet from the Lizard Squad, but Smedley and others said it started with a call from Kivimaki. Kivimaki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and "swatting" incidents -- reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.
Kivimaki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimaki's involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP. Finnish police said Kivimaki also used the nicknames "Ryan", "RyanC" and "Ryan Cleary" (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group -- LulzSec -- who was sentenced to prison for hacking). Kivimaki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimaki's alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimaki was 15 years old at the time. In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimaki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe's ColdFusion software.
Multiple law enforcement sources told KrebsOnSecurity that Kivimaki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. That incident was widely reported to have started with a tweet from the Lizard Squad, but Smedley and others said it started with a call from Kivimaki. Kivimaki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and "swatting" incidents -- reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.
Oh (Score:1)
Good
erodes the trust between therapist and patient (Score:1)
this dude deserves a swift kick to the groin for exploiting vulnerable people.
Re:erodes the trust between therapist and patient (Score:4, Insightful)
Romanian? (Score:2)
I've never heard of such thing before: for a Finnish man to willfully state he was Romanian :)
(I'm Romanian. No, really, I am.)
Start young in Finland (Score:2)
"Julius "Zeekill" Kivimaki, a 25-year-old Finnish man"
"Kivimaki's involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008,"
Started at 10 years of age?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Started at 10 years of age?
There's a reason the term "script kiddie" exists...
Re: (Score:2)
"introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP" I read it as: at 10 y.o. he was hanging around with some older teens in a school gang.
I'm guessing ... (Score:2)
The French will surrender him in short order -- to Finland... :-)
Re:"Hacker" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. As long as it didn't take any particular skill, it's perfectly OK for him to publish private details of therapy patients.
French police (Score:2)
When they roused him and asked for identification, the 6'3" blonde, green-eyed man presented an ID that stated he was of Romanian nationality. The French police were doubtful.
Racists! /s
There might be a 6'3" blonde, green-eyed Romanian man. One...
Re: (Score:2)
Apart from the physical aspect: according to his Most Wanted file, he speaks English, which is suspicious. A Romanian in Paris would know some French.
Since the Police was called on a crime report (domestic violence), they are tasked with identifying everyone involved. He showed some weird foreign document. If an official ID, they had to check the number over the radio and find out it's fake or stolen. If it was some document that is not an official ID, they would take him into custody for a short while unti