Finnish Hacker Charged With Extorting Psychotherapy Clinic, Used Patients' Medical Records To Seek Ransom

A 25-year-old Finnish national has been charged with extorting a once-renowned but now-bankrupt online psychotherapy company and its patients in 2020.

What Happened: In late October, Julius "Zeekill" Kivimaki was arrested in absentia for attempting to extort money from the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center in Finland.

Finnish authorities rarely name suspects in an investigation, but they made an exception in Kivimaki's case, reported Krebs On Security.

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On Oct. 21, 2020, the psychotherapy center became the target of blackmail when a hacker identified as "ransom_man" demanded payment of 40 Bitcoins in return for highly sensitive therapy session notes.

In a series of posts on a Finnish-language darknet discussion board, ransom_man said Vastaamo was unwilling to negotiate a payment, forcing him to publish 100 patient's profiles every 24 hours.

"We're not asking for much, approximately 450,000 euros, which is less than 10 euros per patient and only a small fraction of the around 20 million yearly revenues of this company," ransom_man wrote, stated the report.

When the psychotherapy center still declined to pay, the hacker started targeting individual patients.

On Oct. 23, 2020, ransom_man uploaded a sizable compressed file on the dark web. Along with stolen patient records, the file also contained a complete copy of his home folder. The hacker later deleted the home folder, but not before it was too late.

Kivimaki had been convicted of more than 50,000 cybercrimes, including calling in bomb threats at the tender age of 17.

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