cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/10692187

so, the company was Vastaamo. was because it got bankrupt after the breach, and GDPR violations.

the “hacker”(or rather cracker) was extradited from France to Finland.
you can read about how terrible the company’s security was here: https://tietosuoja.fi/en/-/administrative-fine-imposed-on-psychotherapy-centre-vastaamo-for-data-protection-violations

or watch mental outlaw’s video on the matter, or the Wikipedia article on the breach.

now there are several things that shouldn’t have happened (e.g.: don’t do these things on your main OS, have root access disabled, etc.), but I’ll leave that to you experts.

  • haui
    22•11 months ago

    Not saying its actually what happened but I would ask how he knew about the data.

    Statistically, it should have been a random port scan that got in but since he‘s from the same country, he‘s either professionally or privately connected I assume. He either worked there in IT function, visited as a patient, dated an employee, etc.

    So in other words, he‘s not a master hacker but probably stumbled across this. I had this with a webspace provider once were I could see all other customers folders when I used ssh instead of the web interface. I couldnt access them but I got a wiff of how stuff like this happens. 99.9% of their customers are inept at IT stuff so a mistake in ssh would never come up since customers wouldn’t use it and in that one case, they overlook it.

    So, this might have been his first hack ever and it probably took a long time til he even understood what he had in his hands. Thats why I dont do stuff like this, I‘m prone to such mistakes as well. Most elaborate scheme imaginable and cc it by mistake to someone I know.

    • @[email protected]English
      10•11 months ago

      I just was reading Wikipedia and it said he was arrested previously for hacking.

      In 2015, when he was still a teenager, a Finnish court found Kivimäki guilty of more than 50,000 aggravated computer break-ins. Among other targets, he attacked large educational institutions in the US, hijacking emails, stealing credit card details and blocking site traffic.

      Kivimäki received a two year suspended sentence for those charges.

      https://yle.fi/a/3-12669196

      You’re probably right he had some connection and stumbled onto the data, but this wasn’t his first rodeo.

      • haui
        5•11 months ago

        Thanks for pointing it out. This makes it even more embarassing that he made a mistake like this. But I can still see how it could happen.