Notorious hacker captured in France to face prison sentence in Finland

The affair is historic for Finland. Aleksanteri Julius Kivimäki was sentenced on April 30, 2024 to six years and three months in prison for aggravated data breach. There were more victims in this case than in any other in Finnish criminal history.

Julius Kivimäki, aka “Zeekill”, was responsible for numerous cyberattacks, but it was the one against a Finnish psychiatric center in 2018 that ended his career. The stolen database contained the personal information, patient assessments and consultation reports of around 33,000 people.

At the time, the health establishment refused to pay the 370,000 euros in bitcoin demanded by Julius. He then embarked on a case-by-case extortion campaign, attempting to bribe each patient named in the files. In total, 21,300 people were contacted. The affair quickly turned into a national scandal: “Zeekill” became the country's most wanted cybercriminal and went on the run across Europe.

Five years later, police officers from the anti-crime squad got their hands on Aleksanteri Julius Kivimäki, in France, almost by chance. In February 2023, Julius is in a relationship and lives in Courbevoie, on the outskirts of Paris. While he was arguing with his girlfriend one evening, a friend called the police to tell them that the companion could be violent with the young woman. Once they arrived on site, the police noticed that there was no trace of a fight and that they had just woken up the couple, said the newspaper Libération. However, the young Finn lives with a Romanian identity card and intrigues the police. After checking the list of people wanted by Europol, the BAC police officers understand that they are facing a hacker on the run.

Cyberattacks against Xbox and Playstation

“Zeekil” had been followed for several years by Europol. The hacker is a precocious cybercriminal since at 17 years old, he already had 50,700 acts of cybercrime to his credit. With his collective of pirates, the Lizard Squad, he brought down the online network of Xbox and PlayStation in 2024.

Julius Kivimäki made a few mistakes on the run. The hacker continued to be active on an underground forum in Finland called Ylilauta, posting a simple photo of a bottle of mineral water he was holding in his hand. Finnish police analysts worked on the image to discern part of Julius Kivimäki's fingerprint.

The IP address also matched the one Julius used to sign up for OnlyFans accounts.

It is on this same forum, moreover, that Julius published a large part of the data of psychiatric patients, after having suffered payment refusals. “ A cyberattack on this scale is a disaster for Finland — everyone knew someone affected “, cyber expert Mikko Hyppönen told the BBC.

In France too, hospitals are regularly attacked. Those responsible, however, are sheltered from the courts.