A notorious hacker who was one of Europe's most wanted criminals has been jailed for blackmailing 33,000 therapy patients with their stolen session notes.Julius Kivimäki's imprisonment brings to an end an 11-year cyber-crime spree that started when he rose to prominence in a network of anarchic teenage hacking gangs at the age of just 13.
Tiina was cooling off after the customary Finnish Saturday night sauna when her phone pinged.It was an email from an anonymous sender who somehow had her name, social security number and other private details. "At first I was struck by how polite it was and how nice the tone was," she recalls. “Dear Mrs Parikka” the sender wrote, before outlining that they had obtained her private information from a psychotherapy center where she was a patient.
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If she did not pay a ransom within 24 hours they would all be published online. "It was a suffocating feeling," she says. "I was sat there in my robe feeling like someone had invaded my private world and was trying to make money with my life's trauma. "Tiina realized quickly that she was not alone. Tiina Parikka is one of the victims of the mass hack of Vastaamo.
A total of 33,000 other therapy patients also had their records stolen and thousands were being blackmailed in what is the largest number of victims in a criminal case in Finland.The stolen database from Vastaamo psychotherapy contained the deepest secrets of a large cross-section of society including children. Sensitive conversations on subjects from extra-marital affairs to confessions of crimes were now a bargaining chip.
Mikko and his team spent time tracking the hack and trying to help the police, and theories began to emerge that the hacker was likely to be from Finland.One of the largest police investigations in the country's history closed in on one young Finn who was already infamous in the cyber-crime world.
