Hacker Found Guilty of Leaking Finnish Therapy Records

Today, the Finnish hacker Aleksanteri Kivimäki was found guilty in the hacking and attempted extortion of a company called Vastaamo and its clients. As detailed in depth in a feature for Bloomberg Businessweek’s annual Tech Issue, the Vastaamo hack was the largest crime in Finland’s history by number of victims, and Kivimäki’s trial had riveted the country. At the time of the extortion attempt, Vastaamo was Finland’s leading provider of psychotherapy services. The breach resulted in the release onto the internet of the private data of tens of thousands of people, including public officials and celebrities.

More than the scale of the crime, it was the nature of the information that made the episode such a national trauma. The patient database that Kivimäki stole from Vastaamo contained written notes from therapists, detailed records of the secrets that patients discussed their sessions. One leading Finnish politician compared the national impact of the breach to a terrorist attack.