He Called Himself an ‘Untouchable Hacker God’. But Who Was Behind the Biggest Crime Finland Has Ever Known?

How would you feel if your therapist’s notes—your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings —were held for ransom? And if you didn’t pay up, the notes would be shared with the whole world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality a few years ago. Jenny Kleeman tells the story of a hack that unsettled a whole country:

Three days before the extortion emails were sent, someone using the handle ransom_man had left posts on the dark web, on r/Suomi, the Finnish-language subreddit, and on Ylilauta, Finland’s equivalent to 4chan. This time, the post was in English. “Hello Finnish Colleagues,” it began. “We have hacked the psychotherapy clinic vastaamo.fi and taken tens of thousands of patient records including extremely sensitive session notes and social security numbers. We requested a small payment of 40 bitcoins (nothing for a company with yearly revenues close to 20 million euros) but the CEO has stopped responding to our emails. We are now starting to gradually release their patient records, 100 entries every day.”

There was a link to the dark web, where 100 records were already on display. Directly below it, ransom_man had signed off the post with a single word: “Enjoy!”