Hacker Sentenced After Years of Extorting Psychotherapy Patients – Source: www.darkreading.com

Source: Taina Sohlman via Alamy Stock Photo

Aleksanteri Kivimäki, a Finnish national, has been sentenced to six years and three months in prison, after stealing thousands of patient records from a psychotherapy clinic and using them to blackmail their owners.

A judge in the district court of Länsi-Uusimaa, Finland, sentenced Kivimäki, 26, on April 30 after finding him guilty of 9,231 counts of aggravated dissemination of information infringing on individuals’ private lives, and 20,745 counts of aggravated attempted blackmail. He also was found guilty on 20 counts of aggravated blackmail.

Kivimäki, known online as “Zeekill,” breached Psychotherapy Center Vastaamo Oy’s IT system in November of 2018. It was after this that sensitive information of the clinic’s patients started to be posted online. Kivimäki would demand a ransom of €200 ($213) in order not to leak targets’ data, upping the payment to €500 ($534) if the ransom wasn’t paid in 24 hours. 

Kivimäki ultimately caused such a ruckus that Finland’s crime figures reportedly rose drastically, to more than double the average rate.

A warrant for Kivimäki went out in October of 2022, and he was arrested last year in France. 

In his trial, the court found he was the partial owner of a data center that housed the server used to commit the crimes he was charged with. The encryption key and IP address he used were also discovered.

The district court stated: “Kivimäki’s guilt was also supported by the fact that he had published messages related to the data breach and extortion on the forum Ylilauda under his pseudonym in a purposeful and fixed temporal connection with the extortion actions.”