Trial commences in Finland for 26 y/o who allegedly blackmailed psychotherapy patients

[thewayne]

The twerp hacked Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center and stole all their patient files, which included notes taken during therapy sessions. The center refused to pay a six-figure ransom, so he switched to trying to extort the individual patients for 500 Euro each. That didn't prove a revenue generator either, so he dumped all the files on a dark web site. This was October 2020.

In February 2023 he was arrested by French police when the man, 6'3" and green-eyed, presented Romanian identification which proved false. His attorneys asked for his release during the trial as he had already been jailed for eight months. The judge declared that he was still a flight risk and ordered him held for the duration of the trial.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/11/alleged-extortioner-of-psychotherapy-patients-faces-trial/

Comments

[rain_gryphon]

Trying to directly interact with crazy people (be it extortion or whatever) usually leads to unpredictable results.

[disneydream06]

I hope they lock him up and throw away the keys. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

European prisons are quite different from the American prison system.  Most countries don't have life sentences or death penalties.  Take a look at the movie Who Should We Invade Next? for a look inside.

[disneydream06]

Can we go back in time and use the Turkish, I think it was, prison in the movie Midnight Express? :)

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's what you get for having electronic medical records. It's hugely valuable information in one place that is much easier to steal than physically breaking into a building. I'd prefer Secure On Paper Only myself, but nobody cares about privacy or security anymore.

Re: Well ...

[thewayne]

While I agree with you in a limited number of cases, psychotherapy being one, I think unified medical records overall could be a great boon for health care.  But the devil is in the details when it comes to implementation - speaking as an IT guy with 30 years experience.

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Of course unified records would be convenient and have health benefits. The question is whether those benefits justify the risks and the costs.

Consider that the last stable number of people's approval for the medical industry was a dismal 33% and has since plummeted but not yet stabilized; I've seen numbers all over the twenties and a few in the teens. So if people don't trust the health industry, and don't have control over their own records or consider those in safe storage -- the last points of control they have are not talking or not going. I got new glasses recently. The "privacy" statement consisted of a long list of places they planned to hand my information to, including the goddamn military, and they were demanding a lot of information that had nothing to do with my eyes. Well, if people don't feel safe sharing information, then a whole lot more health issues will go untreated. I think that's a serious problem. And not a lot of people are taking it seriously.

From what I see, information security is the same as telling a woman to keep her knees together and then her having to deal with a rape-friendly society. Sure I'd love to keep my data secure -- but I can't have that and participate in society or get health care. So I wind up minimizing contact as much as possible and resenting the violations. Not a great situation.

[silveradept]

I'm a bit surprised that both attempts at mass extortion failed. Usually someone is willing to pay up because they're embarrassed at the information being leaked, but maybe these patients all shrugged and thought that since it was already in the hands of far too many people, more wouldn't hurt them any?

[thewayne]

The USA is encouraging governments around the world to encourage businesses to stop paying ransomware demands, but the desire to keep dirty laundry from being aired is strong.  In this case, I don't know why the practice didn't pay up.  Honor, too much money demanded, lack of trust that the attacker wouldn't reveal the information anyway: I don't know.  In my case, I'm pretty confident that a lot of my medical records have been spilled as they're all over the place with the number of doctors that I've seen over the last 15 years.  If they were to become public, it wouldn't particularly bother me - but I also don't have psych records.  Now THAT might bother me if I did!