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Finland's most wanted hacker arrested
Julius Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finn, had been wanted by authorities for more than two years on suspicion of being behind the hacking of Playstation and Xbox online services
FEBRUARY 8, 2023
Chance sometimes does things well. On February 3, at dawn, the police intervened in a sadly banal case of domestic violence in Courbevoie. They ring, no answer. They decide to use the ram, start pounding on the door, when a woman comes to open it. His companion is still sleeping. Awakened, he presents Romanian identity papers. The police decide to consult the file of wanted persons. Surprise. The young man is in fact Julius Kivimäki , 25, known as "Zeekill", a famous Finnish criminal hacker who has been wanted by Europol since November 2022. He is accused of cybercrime, extortion, racketeering and is above all a figure among the most wanted fugitives of
His hacker CV is indeed full. As a teenager, he already began denial of service attacks, aimed at crashing the site. He also issued false threats (a bomb threat against American Airlines ) and practiced swatting, consisting of reporting false hostage-takings in a home to call the police.
Psychotherapy centers
He will then form the group "Lizard Squad", a group specializing in denial of service attacks. The group made a name for itself by attacking the online network of Xbox and PlayStation. At the same time, Julius Kivimäki carries out phishing scams by posing as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), embarks on the theft of bank card numbers and tries to launder his money by investing in Bitcoin. In 2015, he is only 17 years old but already receives a two-year suspended prison sentence for having committed 50,700 acts of cybercrime.
Why stop now while everything is going so well ? Five years later, he carried out his biggest data robbery, this time attacking a hospital group of 25 psychotherapy centers. He gets his hands on the files of 22,000 patients, demands a ransom of 452,000 euros to unlock them. Except that the victim refuses to give in and makes the blackmail public. "Zeekill", in the impasse, then tries to directly extort the families concerned by claiming 500 euros from them. In his headlong rush, he leaves traces in the files he scatters on the darknet , thus allowing the authorities to trace him.
the things some ppl gotta do to get at any patient records...
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