A man who is accused of being the ringleader of the group behind the massive hack of Ticketmaster data earlier this year has been arrested in Canada. He appeared in court yesterday as the legal process begins to try to extradite him to the US.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Department Of Justice told reporters that Alexander ‘Connor’ Moucka was arrested on 30 Oct following a request from the US government. He appeared in court the same day and again yesterday. The spokesperson then added, “As extradition requests are considered confidential state-to-state communications, we cannot comment further on this case”.
According to 404, at yesterday’s court session Moucka appeared remotely from prison and told the judge that he is yet to appoint a lawyer because “the prison’s been locked down a lot”. But, he added, “I’ll get one soon I think”, later confirming that he would be applying for legal aid to help fund attorney costs.
Moucka is allegedly part of a mysterious group of hackers who were responsible for a number of major data breaches earlier this year, all of which involved companies who were customers of cloud data storage business Snowflake.
Personal data of more than half a billion ticket-buyers was stolen from Live Nation’s Ticketmaster. Some of the customers whose data was taken are now suing the ticketing firm.
Other companies who were victims of data breaches believed to have been instigated by the same group included AT&T and Santander.
An investigation by Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant concluded that a “significant volume of data” had been stolen from about 165 Snowflake customers by a “financially motivated threat actor”. It added that the hack was instigated using compromised login credentials and that there was no evidence Snowflake itself had been breached.
According to Wired, which cites Allison Nixon from security firm Unit 221B, Moucka is believed to be “a notorious figure in the cybercriminal underground” who operated under the handles Waifu and Judische. Unit 221B has long tracked his activity, Nixon says, adding, “I was waiting for this one - Waifu was the leader of a group who was responsible for many major intrusions over the last half decade”.