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Howdy! My name is Harrison Richardson, or rs0n (arson) when I want to feel cooler than I really am. The code in this repository started as a small collection of scripts to help automate many of the common Bug Bounty hunting processes I found myself repeating. Over time, I built a simple web application with a MongoDB connection to manage my findings and identify valuable data points. After 5 years of Bug Bounty hunting, both part-time and full-time, I'm finally ready to package this collection of tools into a proper framework.
The Ars0n Framework is designed to provide aspiring Application Security Engineers with all the tools they need to leverage Bug Bounty hunting as a means to learn valuable, real-world AppSec concepts and make 💰 doing it! My goal is to lower the barrier of entry for Bug Bounty hunting by providing easy-to-use automation tools in combination with educational content and how-to guides for a wide range of Web-based and Cloud-based vulnerabilities. In combination with my YouTube content, this framework will help aspiring Application Security Engineers to quickly and easily understand real-world security concepts that directly translate to a high paying career in Cyber Security.
In addition to using this tool for Bug Bounty Hunting, aspiring engineers can also use this Github Repository as a canvas to practice collaborating with other developers! This tool was inspired by Metasploit and designed to be modular in a similar way. Each Script (Ex: wildfire.py or slowburn.py) is basically an algorithm that runs the Modules (Ex: fire-starter.py or fire-scanner.py) in a specific patter for a desired result. Because of this design, the community is free to build new Scripts to solve a specific use-case or Modules to expand the results of these Scripts. By learning the code in this framework and using Github to contribute your own code, aspiring engineers will continue to learn real-world skills that can be applied on the first day of a Security Engineer I position.
My hope is that this modular framework will act as a canvas to help share what I've learned over my career to the next generation of Security Engineers! Trust me, we need all the help we can get!!
Paste this code block into a clean installation of Kali Linux 2023.4 to download, install, and run the latest stable Alpha version of the framework:
FreshRSS sudo apt update && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt -y upgrade && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
wget https://github.com/R-s0n/ars0n-framework/releases/download/v0.0.2-alpha/ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
rm ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
cd ars0n-framework
./install.sh
wget https://github.com/R-s0n/ars0n-framework/releases/download/v0.0.2-alpha/ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
rm ars0n-framework-v0.0.2-alpha.tar.gz
The Ars0n Framework includes a script that installs all the necessary tools, packages, etc. that are needed to run the framework on a clean installation of Kali Linux 2023.4.
Please note that the only supported installation of this framework is on a clean installation of Kali Linux 2023.3. If you choose to try and run the framework outside of a clean Kali install, I will not be able to help troubleshoot if you have any issues.
./install.sh
This video shows exactly what to expect from a successful installation.
If you are using an ARM Processor, you will need to add the --arm flag to all Install/Run scripts
./install.sh --arm
You will be prompted to enter various API keys and tokens when the installation begins. Entering these is not required to run the core functionality of the framework. If you do not enter these API keys and tokens at the time of installation, simply hit enter at each of the prompts. The keys can be added later to the ~/.keys directory. More information about how to add these keys manually can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section of this README.
Once the installation is complete, you will be given the option to run the application by entering Y. If you choose not the run the application immediately, or if you need to run the application after a reboot, simply navigate to the root directly and run the run.sh bash script.
./run.sh
If you are using an ARM Processor, you will need to add the --arm flag to all Install/Run scripts
./run.sh --arm
The Ars0n Framework's Core Modules are used to determine the basic scanning logic. Each script is designed to support a specific recon methodology based on what the user is trying to accomplish.
At this time, the Wildfire script is the most widely used Core Module in the Ars0n Framework. The purpose of this module is to allow the user to scan multiple targets that allow for testing on any subdomain discovered by the researcher.
How it works:
Most Wildfire scans take between 8 and 48 hours to complete against a single domain if all Sub-Modules are being run. Variations in this timing can be caused by a number of factors, including the target application and the machine running the framework.
Also, please note that most data will not show in the GUI until the scan has completed. It's best to try and run the scan overnight or over a weekend, depending on the number of domains being scanned, and return once the scan has complete to move from Recon to Enumeration.
Running Wildfire:
Wildfire can be run from the GUI using the Wildfire button on the dashboard. Once clicked, the front-end will use the checkboxes on the screen to determine what flags should be passed to the scanner.
Please note that running scans from the GUI still has a few bugs and edge cases that haven't been sorted out. If you have any issues, you can simply run the scan form the CLI.
All Core Modules for The Ars0n Framework are stored in the /toolkit directory. Simply navigate to the directory and run wildfire.py with the necessary flags. At least one Sub-Module flag must be provided.
python3 wildfire.py --start --cloud --scan
Unlike the Wildfire module, which requires the user to identify target domains to scan, the Slowburn module does that work for you. By communicating with APIs for various bug bounty hunting platforms, this script will identify all domains that allow for testing on any discovered subdomain. Once the data has been populated, Slowburn will randomly choose one domain at a time to scan in the same way Wildfire does.
Please note that the Slowburn module is still in development and is not considered part of the stable alpha release. There will likely be bugs and edge cases encountered by the user.
In order for Slowburn to identify targets to scan, it must first be initialized. This initialization step collects the necessary data from various API's and deposits them into a JSON file stored locally. Once this initialization step is complete, Slowburn will automatically begin selecting and scanning one target at a time.
To initalize Slowburn, simply run the following command:
python3 slowburn.py --initialize
Once the data has been collected, it is up to the user whether they want to re-initialize the tool upon the next scan.
Remember that the scope and targets on public bug bounty programs can change frequently. If you choose to run Slowburn without initializing the data, you may be scanning domains that are no longer in scope for the program. It is strongly recommended that Slowburn be re-initialized each time before running.
If you choose not to re-initialize the target data, you can run Slowburn using the previously collected data with the following command:
python3 slowburn.py
The Ars0n Framework's Sub-Modules are designed to be leveraged by the Core Modules to divide the Recon & Enumeration phases into specific tasks. The data collected in each Sub-Module is used by the others to expand your picture of the target's attack surface.
Fire-Starter is the first step to performing recon against a target domain. The goal of this script is to collect a wealth of information about the attack surface of your target. Once collected, this data will be used by all other Sub-Modules to help the user identify a specific URL that is potentially vulnerable.
Fire-Starter works by running a series of open-source tools to enumerate hidden subdomains, DNS records, and the ASN's to identify where those external entries are hosted. Currently, Fire-Starter works by chaining together the following widely used open-source tools:
These tools cover a wide range of techniques to identify hidden subdomains, including web scraping, brute force, and crawling to identify links and JavaScript URLs.
Once the scan is complete, the Dashboard will be updated and available to the user.
Most Sub-Modules in The Ars0n Framework requre the data collected from the Fire-Starter module to work. With this in mind, Fire-Starter must be included in the first scan against a target for any usable data to be collected.
Coming soon...
Fire-Scanner uses the results of Fire-Starter and Fire-Cloud to perform Wide-Band Scanning against all subdomains and cloud services that have been discovered from previous scans.
At this stage of development, this script leverages Nuclei almost exclusively for all scanning. Instead of simply running the tool, Fire-Scanner breaks the scan down into specific collections of Nuclei Templates and scans them one by one. This strategy helps ensure the scans are stable and produce consistent results, removes any unnecessary or unsafe scan checks, and produces actionable results.
The vast majority of issues installing and/or running the Ars0n Framework are caused by not installing the tool on a clean installation of Kali Linux.
It is important to remember that, at its core, the Ars0n Framework is a collection of automation scripts designed to run existing open-source tools. Each of these tools have their own ways of operating and can experience unexpected behavior if conflicts emerge with any existing service/tool running on the user's system. This complexity is the reason why running The Ars0n Framework should only be run on a clean installation of Kali Linux.
Another very common issue users experience is caused by MongoDB not successfully installing and/or running on their machine. The most common manifestation of this issue is the user is unable to add an initial FQDN and simply sees a broken GUI. If this occurs, please ensure that your machine has the necessary system requirements to run MongoDB. Unfortunately, there is no current solution if you run into this issue.
Coming soon...
A 26-year-old Finnish man was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after being convicted of hacking into an online psychotherapy clinic, leaking tens of thousands of patient therapy records, and attempting to extort the clinic and patients.
On October 21, 2020, the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center in Finland became the target of blackmail when a tormentor identified as “ransom_man” demanded payment of 40 bitcoins (~450,000 euros at the time) in return for a promise not to publish highly sensitive therapy session notes Vastaamo had exposed online.
Ransom_man announced on the dark web that he would start publishing 100 patient profiles every 24 hours. When Vastaamo declined to pay, ransom_man shifted to extorting individual patients. According to Finnish police, some 22,000 victims reported extortion attempts targeting them personally, targeted emails that threatened to publish their therapy notes online unless paid a 500 euro ransom.
Finnish prosecutors quickly zeroed in on a suspect: Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, a notorious criminal hacker convicted of committing tens of thousands of cybercrimes before he became an adult. After being charged with the attack in October 2022, Kivimäki fled the country. He was arrested four months later in France, hiding out under an assumed name and passport.
Antti Kurittu is a former criminal investigator who worked on an investigation involving Kivimäki’s use of the Zbot botnet, among other activities Kivimäki engaged in as a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet (HTP).
Kurittu said the prosecution had demanded at least seven years in jail, and that the sentence handed down was six years and three months. Kurittu said prosecutors knocked a few months off of Kivimäki’s sentence because he agreed to pay compensation to his victims, and that Kivimäki will remain in prison during any appeal process.
“I think the sentencing was as expected, knowing the Finnish judicial system,” Kurittu told KrebsOnSecurity. “As Kivimäki has not been sentenced to a non-suspended prison sentence during the last five years, he will be treated as a first-timer, his previous convictions notwithstanding.”
But because juvenile convictions in Finland don’t count towards determining whether somebody is a first-time offender, Kivimäki will end up serving approximately half of his sentence.
“This seems like a short sentence when taking into account the gravity of his actions and the life-altering consequences to thousands of people, but it’s almost the maximum the law allows for,” Kurittu said.
Kivimäki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimäki’s involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP.
Finnish police said Kivimäki also used the nicknames “Ryan”, “RyanC” and “Ryan Cleary” (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group — LulzSec — who was sentenced to prison for hacking).
Kivimäki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimäki’s alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimäki was 15 years old at the time.
In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimäki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software. KrebsOnSecurity detailed the work of HTP in September 2013, after the group compromised servers inside data brokers LexisNexis, Kroll, and Dun & Bradstreet.
The group used the same ColdFusion flaws to break into the National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), a non-profit that provides research and investigative support to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As KrebsOnSecurity reported at the time, this small ColdFusion botnet of data broker servers was being controlled by the same cybercriminals who’d assumed control over SSNDOB, which operated one of the underground’s most reliable services for obtaining Social Security Number, dates of birth and credit file information on U.S. residents.
Kivimäki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. Kivimäki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and “swatting” incidents — reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.
Ville Tapio, the former CEO of Vastaamo, was fired and also prosecuted following the breach. Ransom_man bragged about Vastaamo’s sloppy security, noting the company had used the laughably weak username and password “root/root” to protect sensitive patient records.
Investigators later found Vastaamo had originally been hacked in 2018 and again in 2019. In April 2023, a Finnish court handed down a three-month sentence for Tapio, but that sentence was suspended because he had no previous criminal record.
BREAD (BIOS Reverse Engineering & Advanced Debugging) is an 'injectable' real-mode x86 debugger that can debug arbitrary real-mode code (on real HW) from another PC via serial cable.
BREAD emerged from many failed attempts to reverse engineer legacy BIOS. Given that the vast majority -- if not all -- BIOS analysis is done statically using disassemblers, understanding the BIOS becomes extremely difficult, since there's no way to know the value of registers or memory in a given piece of code.
Despite this, BREAD can also debug arbitrary code in real-mode, such as bootable code or DOS programs too.
This debugger is divided into two parts: the debugger (written entirely in assembly and running on the hardware being debugged) and the bridge, written in C and running on Linux.
The debugger is the injectable code, written in 16-bit real-mode, and can be placed within the BIOS ROM or any other real-mode code. When executed, it sets up the appropriate interrupt handlers, puts the processor in single-step mode, and waits for commands on the serial port.
The bridge, on the other hand, is the link between the debugger and GDB. The bridge communicates with GDB via TCP and forwards the requests/responses to the debugger through the serial port. The idea behind the bridge is to remove the complexity of GDB packets and establish a simpler protocol for communicating with the machine. In addition, the simpler protocol enables the final code size to be smaller, making it easier for the debugger to be injectable into various different environments.
As shown in the following diagram:
+---------+ simple packets +----------+ GDB packets +---------+
| |--------------->| |--------------->| |
| dbg | | bridge | | gdb |
|(real HW)|<---------------| (Linux) |<---------------| (Linux) |
+---------+ serial +----------+ TCP +---------+By implementing the GDB stub, BREAD has many features out-of-the-box. The following commands are supported:
How many? Yes. Since the code being debugged is unaware that it is being debugged, it can interfere with the debugger in several ways, to name a few:
Protected-mode jump: If the debugged code switches to protected-mode, the structures for interrupt handlers, etc. are altered and the debugger will no longer be invoked at that point in the code. However, it is possible that a jump back to real mode (restoring the full previous state) will allow the debugger to work again.
IDT changes: If for any reason the debugged code changes the IDT or its base address, the debugger handlers will not be properly invoked.
Stack: BREAD uses a stack and assumes it exists! It should not be inserted into locations where the stack has not yet been configured.
For BIOS debugging, there are other limitations such as: it is not possible to debug the BIOS code from the very beggining (bootblock), as a minimum setup (such as RAM) is required for BREAD to function correctly. However, it is possible to perform a "warm-reboot" by setting CS:EIP to F000:FFF0. In this scenario, the BIOS initialization can be followed again, as BREAD is already properly loaded. Please note that the "code-path" of BIOS initialization during a warm-reboot may be different from a cold-reboot and the execution flow may not be exactly the same.
Building only requires GNU Make, a C compiler (such as GCC, Clang, or TCC), NASM, and a Linux machine.
The debugger has two modes of operation: polling (default) and interrupt-based:
Polling mode is the simplest approach and should work well in a variety of environments. However, due the polling nature, there is a high CPU usage:
$ git clone https://github.com/Theldus/BREAD.git
$ cd BREAD/
$ makeThe interrupt-based mode optimizes CPU utilization by utilizing UART interrupts to receive new data, instead of constantly polling for it. This results in the CPU remaining in a 'halt' state until receiving commands from the debugger, and thus, preventing it from consuming 100% of the CPU's resources. However, as interrupts are not always enabled, this mode is not set as the default option:
$ git clone https://github.com/Theldus/BREAD.git
$ cd BREAD/
$ make UART_POLLING=noUsing BREAD only requires a serial cable (and yes, your motherboard has a COM header, check the manual) and injecting the code at the appropriate location.
To inject, minimal changes must be made in dbg.asm (the debugger's src). The code's 'ORG' must be changed and also how the code should return (look for ">> CHANGE_HERE <<" in the code for places that need to be changed).
Using an AMI legacy as an example, where the debugger module will be placed in the place of the BIOS logo (0x108200 or FFFF:8210) and the following instructions in the ROM have been replaced with a far call to the module:
...
00017EF2 06 push es
00017EF3 1E push ds
00017EF4 07 pop es
00017EF5 8BD8 mov bx,ax -┐ replaced by: call 0xFFFF:0x8210 (dbg.bin)
00017EF7 B8024F mov ax,0x4f02 -┘
00017EFA CD10 int 0x10
00017EFC 07 pop es
00017EFD C3 ret
...the following patch is sufficient:
diff --git a/dbg.asm b/dbg.asm
index caedb70..88024d3 100644
--- a/dbg.asm
+++ b/dbg.asm
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
; SOFTWARE.
[BITS 16]
-[ORG 0x0000] ; >> CHANGE_HERE <<
+[ORG 0x8210] ; >> CHANGE_HERE <<
%include "constants.inc"
@@ -140,8 +140,8 @@ _start:
; >> CHANGE_HERE <<
; Overwritten BIOS instructions below (if any)
- nop
- nop
+ mov ax, 0x4F02
+ int 0x10
nop
nopIt is important to note that if you have altered a few instructions within your ROM to invoke the debugger code, they must be restored prior to returning from the debugger.
The reason for replacing these two instructions is that they are executed just prior to the BIOS displaying the logo on the screen, which is now the debugger, ensuring a few key points:
Finding a good location to call the debugger (where the BIOS has already initialized enough, but not too late) can be challenging, but it is possible.
After this, dbg.bin is ready to be inserted into the correct position in the ROM.
Debugging DOS programs with BREAD is a bit tricky, but possible:
dbg.asm so that DOS understands it as a valid DOS program:times)int 0x20)The following patch addresses this:
diff --git a/dbg.asm b/dbg.asm
index caedb70..b042d35 100644
--- a/dbg.asm
+++ b/dbg.asm
@@ -21,7 +21,10 @@
; SOFTWARE.
[BITS 16]
-[ORG 0x0000] ; >> CHANGE_HERE <<
+[ORG 0x100]
+
+times 40*1024 db 0x90 ; keep some distance,
+ ; 40kB should be enough
%include "constants.inc"
@@ -140,7 +143,7 @@ _start:
; >> CHANGE_HERE <<
; Overwritten BIOS instructions below (if any)
- nop
+ int 0x20 ; DOS interrupt to exit process
nopCreate a bootable FreeDOS (or DOS) floppy image containing just the kernel and the terminal: KERNEL.SYS and COMMAND.COM. Also add to this floppy image the program to be debugged and the DBG.COM (dbg.bin).
The following steps should be taken after creating the image:
bridge already opened (refer to the next section for instructions).DBG.COM.DBG.COM process to continue until it finishes.It is important to note that DOS does not erase the process image after it exits. As a result, the debugger can be configured like any other DOS program and the appropriate breakpoints can be set. The beginning of the debugger is filled with NOPs, so it is anticipated that the new process will not overwrite the debugger's memory, allowing it to continue functioning even after it appears to be "finished". This allows BREaD to debug other programs, including DOS itself.
Bridge is the glue between the debugger and GDB and can be used in different ways, whether on real hardware or virtual machine.
Its parameters are:
Usage: ./bridge [options]
Options:
-s Enable serial through socket, instead of device
-d <path> Replaces the default device path (/dev/ttyUSB0)
(does not work if -s is enabled)
-p <port> Serial port (as socket), default: 2345
-g <port> GDB port, default: 1234
-h This help
If no options are passed the default behavior is:
./bridge -d /dev/ttyUSB0 -g 1234
Minimal recommended usages:
./bridge -s (socket mode, serial on 2345 and GDB on 1234)
./bridge (device mode, serial on /dev/ttyUSB0 and GDB on 1234)
To use it on real hardware, just invoke it without parameters. Optionally, you can change the device path with the -d parameter:
./bridge or ./bridge -d /path/to/device)Single-stepped, you can now connect GDB! and then launch GDB: gdb.For use in a virtual machine, the execution order changes slightly:
./bridge or ./bridge -d /path/to/device)make bochs or make qemu)Single-stepped, you can now connect GDB! and then launch GDB: gdb.In both cases, be sure to run GDB inside the BRIDGE root folder, as there are auxiliary files in this folder for GDB to work properly in 16-bit.
BREAD is always open to the community and willing to accept contributions, whether with issues, documentation, testing, new features, bugfixes, typos, and etc. Welcome aboard.
BREAD is licensed under MIT License. Written by Davidson Francis and (hopefully) other contributors.
Breakpoints are implemented as hardware breakpoints and therefore have a limited number of available breakpoints. In the current implementation, only 1 active breakpoint at a time! ↩
Hardware watchpoints (like breakpoints) are also only supported one at a time. ↩
Please note that debug registers do not work by default on VMs. For bochs, it needs to be compiled with the --enable-x86-debugger=yes flag. For Qemu, it needs to run with KVM enabled: --enable-kvm (make qemu already does this). ↩
Prosecutors in Finland this week commenced their criminal trial against Julius Kivimäki, a 26-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a once popular and now-bankrupt online psychotherapy practice and thousands of its patients. In a 2,200-page report, Finnish authorities laid out how they connected the extortion spree to Kivimäki, a notorious hacker who was convicted in 2015 of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, including data breaches, payment fraud, operating a botnet and calling in bomb threats.
In November 2022, Kivimäki was charged with attempting to extort money from the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center. In that breach, which occurred in October 2020, a hacker using the handle “Ransom Man” threatened to publish patient psychotherapy notes if Vastaamo did not pay a six-figure ransom demand.
Vastaamo refused, so Ransom Man shifted to extorting individual patients — sending them targeted emails threatening to publish their therapy notes unless paid a 500-euro ransom. When Ransom Man found little success extorting patients directly, they uploaded to the dark web a large compressed file containing all of the stolen Vastaamo patient records.
Security experts soon discovered Ransom Man had mistakenly included an entire copy of their home folder, where investigators found many clues pointing to Kivimäki’s involvement. By that time, Kivimäki was no longer in Finland, but the Finnish government nevertheless charged Kivimäki in absentia with the Vastaamo hack. The 2,200-page evidence document against Kivimäki suggests he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle while on the lam, frequenting luxury resorts and renting fabulously expensive cars and living quarters.
But in February 2023, Kivimäki was arrested in France after authorities there responded to a domestic disturbance call and found the defendant sleeping off a hangover on the couch of a woman he’d met the night before. The French police grew suspicious when the 6′ 3″ blonde, green-eyed man presented an ID that stated he was of Romanian nationality.
A redacted copy of an ID Kivimaki gave to French authorities claiming he was from Romania.
Finnish prosecutors showed that Kivimäki’s credit card had been used to pay for the virtual server that hosted the stolen Vastaamo patient notes. What’s more, the home folder included in the Vastaamo patient data archive also allowed investigators to peer into other cybercrime projects of the accused, including domains that Ransom Man had access to as well as a lengthy history of commands he’d executed on the rented virtual server.
Some of those domains allegedly administered by Kivimäki were set up to smear the reputations of different companies and individuals. One of those was a website that claimed to have been authored by a person who headed up IT infrastructure for a major bank in Norway which discussed the idea of legalizing child sexual abuse.
Another domain hosted a fake blog that besmirched the reputation of a Tulsa, Okla. man whose name was attached to blog posts about supporting the “white pride” movement and calling for a pardon of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Kivimäki appears to have sought to sully the name of this reporter as well. The 2,200-page document shows that Kivimäki owned and operated the domain krebsonsecurity[.]org, which hosted various hacking tools that Kivimäki allegedly used, including programs for mass-scanning the Internet for systems vulnerable to known security flaws, as well as scripts for cracking database server usernames and passwords, and downloading databases.
Ransom Man inadvertently included a copy of his home directory in the leaked Vastaamo patient data. A lengthy history of the commands run by that user show they used krebsonsecurity-dot-org to host hacking and scanning tools.
Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at WithSecure (formerly F-Secure), said the Finnish authorities have done “amazing work,” and that “it’s rare to have this much evidence for a cybercrime case.”
Petteri Järvinen is a respected IT expert and author who has been following the trial, and he said the prosecution’s case so far has been strong.
“The National Bureau of Investigation has done a good job and Mr Kivimäki for his part some elementary mistakes,” Järvinen wrote on LinkedIn. “This sends an important message: online crime does not pay. Traces are left in the digital world too, even if it is very tedious for the police to collect them from servers all around the world.”
Antti Kurittu is an information security specialist and a former criminal investigator. In 2013, Kurittu worked on an investigation involving Kivimäki’s use of the Zbot botnet, among other activities Kivimäki engaged in as a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet (HTP). Kurittu said it remains to be seen if the prosecution can make their case, and if the defense has any answers to all of the evidence presented.
“Based on the public pretrial investigation report, it looks like the case has a lot of details that seem very improbable to be coincidental,” Kurittu told KrebsOnSecurity. “For example, a full copy of the Vastaamo patient database was found on a server that belonged to Scanifi, a company with no reasonable business that Kivimäki was affiliated with. The leaked home folder contents were also connected to Kivimäki and were found on servers that were under his control.”
The Finnish daily yle.fi reports that Kivimäki’s lawyers sought to have their client released from confinement for the remainder of his trial, noting that the defendant has already been detained for eight months.
The court denied that request, saying the defendant was still a flight risk. Kivimäki’s trial is expected to continue until February 2024, in part to accommodate testimony from a large number of victims. Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year sentence for Kivimäki.
Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimäki had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to show up in court and Finland issued an international warrant for his arrest.
In late October 2022, Kivimäki was charged (and “arrested in absentia,” according to the Finns) with attempting to extort money from the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center. In that breach, which occurred in October 2020, a hacker using the handle “Ransom Man” threatened to publish patient psychotherapy notes if Vastaamo did not pay a six-figure ransom demand.
Vastaamo refused, so Ransom Man shifted to extorting individual patients — sending them targeted emails threatening to publish their therapy notes unless paid a 500-euro ransom.
When Ransom Man found little success extorting patients directly, they uploaded to the dark web a large compressed file containing all of the stolen Vastaamo patient records.
But as documented by KrebsOnSecurity in November 2022, security experts soon discovered Ransom Man had mistakenly included an entire copy of their home folder, where investigators found many clues pointing to Kivimäki’s involvement. From that story:
“Among those who grabbed a copy of the database was Antti Kurittu, a team lead at Nixu Corporation and a former criminal investigator. In 2013, Kurittu worked on an investigation involving Kivimäki’s use of the Zbot botnet, among other activities Kivimäki engaged in as a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet (HTP).”
“It was a huge opsec [operational security] fail, because they had a lot of stuff in there — including the user’s private SSH folder, and a lot of known hosts that we could take a very good look at,” Kurittu told KrebsOnSecurity, declining to discuss specifics of the evidence investigators seized. “There were also other projects and databases.”
According to the French news site actu.fr, Kivimäki was arrested around 7 a.m. on Feb. 3, after authorities in Courbevoie responded to a domestic violence report. Kivimäki had been out earlier with a woman at a local nightclub, and later the two returned to her home but reportedly got into a heated argument.
Police responding to the scene were admitted by another woman — possibly a roommate — and found the man inside still sleeping off a long night. When they roused him and asked for identification, the 6′ 3″ blonde, green-eyed man presented an ID that stated he was of Romanian nationality.
The French police were doubtful. After consulting records on most-wanted criminals, they quickly identified the man as Kivimäki and took him into custody.
Kivimäki initially gained notoriety as a self-professed member of the Lizard Squad, a mainly low-skilled hacker group that specialized in DDoS attacks. But American and Finnish investigators say Kivimäki’s involvement in cybercrime dates back to at least 2008, when he was introduced to a founding member of what would soon become HTP.
Finnish police said Kivimäki also used the nicknames “Ryan”, “RyanC” and “Ryan Cleary” (Ryan Cleary was actually a member of a rival hacker group — LulzSec — who was sentenced to prison for hacking).
Kivimaki and other HTP members were involved in mass-compromising web servers using known vulnerabilities, and by 2012 Kivimäki’s alias Ryan Cleary was selling access to those servers in the form of a DDoS-for-hire service. Kivimäki was 15 years old at the time.
The DDoS-for-hire service allegedly operated by Kivimäki in 2012.
In 2013, investigators going through devices seized from Kivimäki found computer code that had been used to crack more than 60,000 web servers using a previously unknown vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion software.
KrebsOnSecurity detailed the work of HTP in September 2013, after the group compromised servers inside data brokers LexisNexis, Kroll, and Dun & Bradstreet.
The group used the same ColdFusion flaws to break into the National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), a non-profit that provides research and investigative support to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As KrebsOnSecurity reported at the time, this small ColdFusion botnet of data broker servers was being controlled by the same cybercriminals who’d assumed control over ssndob[.]ms, which operated one of the underground’s most reliable services for obtaining Social Security Number, dates of birth and credit file information on U.S. residents.
Multiple law enforcement sources told KrebsOnSecurity that Kivimäki was responsible for making an August 2014 bomb threat against former Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley that grounded an American Airlines plane. That incident was widely reported to have started with a tweet from the Lizard Squad, but Smedley and others said it started with a call from Kivimäki.
Kivimäki also was involved in calling in multiple fake bomb threats and “swatting” incidents — reporting fake hostage situations at an address to prompt a heavily armed police response to that location.
Kivimäki’s apparent indifference to hiding his tracks drew the interest of Finnish and American cybercrime investigators, and soon Finnish prosecutors charged him with an array of cybercrime violations. At trial, prosecutors presented evidence showing he’d used stolen credit cards to buy luxury goods and shop vouchers, and participated in a money laundering scheme that he used to fund a trip to Mexico.
Kivimäki was ultimately convicted of orchestrating more than 50,000 cybercrimes. But largely because he was still a minor at the time (17) , he was given a 2-year suspended sentence and ordered to forfeit EUR 6,558.
As I wrote in 2015 following Kivimäki’s trial:
“The danger in such a decision is that it emboldens young malicious hackers by reinforcing the already popular notion that there are no consequences for cybercrimes committed by individuals under the age of 18.
Kivimäki is now crowing about the sentence; He’s changed the description on his Twitter profile to “Untouchable hacker god.” The Twitter account for the Lizard Squad tweeted the news of Kivimäki’s non-sentencing triumphantly: “All the people that said we would rot in prison don’t want to comprehend what we’ve been saying since the beginning, we have free passes.”
Something tells me Kivimäki won’t get off so easily this time, assuming he is successfully extradited back to Finland. A statement by the Finnish police says they are seeking Kivimäki’s extradition and that they expect the process to go smoothly.
Kivimäki could not be reached for comment. But he has been discussing his case on Reddit using his legal first name — Aleksanteri (he stopped using his middle name Julius when he moved abroad several years ago). In a post dated Jan. 31, 2022, Kivimäki responded to another Finnish-speaking Reddit user who said they were a fugitive from justice.
“Same thing,” Kivimäki replied. “Shall we start some kind of club? A support organization for wanted persons?”
A 25-year-old Finnish man has been charged with extorting a once popular and now-bankrupt online psychotherapy company and its patients. Finnish authorities rarely name suspects in an investigation, but they were willing to make an exception for Julius “Zeekill” Kivimaki, a notorious hacker who — at the tender age of 17 — had been convicted of more than 50,000 cybercrimes, including data breaches, payment fraud, operating botnets, and calling in bomb threats.
In late October 2022, Kivimaki was charged (and arrested in absentia, according to the Finns) with attempting to extort money from the Vastaamo Psychotherapy Center. On October 21, 2020, Vastaamo became the target of blackmail when a tormentor identified as “ransom_man” demanded payment of 40 bitcoins (~450,000 euros at the time) in return for a promise not to publish highly sensitive therapy session notes Vastaamo had exposed online.
In a series of posts over the ensuing days on a Finnish-language dark net discussion board, ransom_man said Vastaamo appeared unwilling to negotiate a payment, and that he would start publishing 100 patient profiles every 24 hours “to provide further incentive for the company to continue communicating with us.”
“We’re not asking for much, approximately 450,000 euros which is less than 10 euros per patient and only a small fraction of the around 20 million yearly revenues of this company,” ransom_man wrote.
When Vastaamo declined to pay, ransom_man shifted to extorting individual patients. According to Finnish police, some 22,000 victims reported extortion attempts targeting them personally, targeted emails that threatened to publish their therapy notes online unless paid a 500 euro ransom.
The extortion message targeted Vastaamo patients.
On Oct. 23, 2020, ransom_man uploaded to the dark web a large compressed file that included all of the stolen Vastaamo patient records. But investigators found the file also contained an entire copy of ransom_man’s home folder, a likely mistake that exposed a number of clues that they say point to Kivimaki.
Ransom_man quickly deleted the large file (accompanied by a “whoops” notation), but not before it had been downloaded a number of times. The entire archive has since been made into a searchable website on the Dark Web.
Among those who grabbed a copy of the database was Antti Kurittu, a team lead at Nixu Corporation and a former criminal investigator. In 2013, Kurittu worked on investigation involving Kivimaki’s use of the Zbot botnet, among other activities Kivimaki engaged in as a member of the hacker group Hack the Planet.
“It was a huge opsec [operational security] fail, because they had a lot of stuff in there — including the user’s private SSH folder, and a lot of known hosts that we could take a very good look at,” Kurittu told KrebsOnSecurity, declining to discuss specifics of the evidence investigators seized. “There were also other projects and databases.”
Kurittu said he and others he and others who were familiar with illegal activities attributed to Kivimäki couldn’t shake suspicion that the infamous cybercriminal was also behind the Vastaamo extortion.
“I couldn’t find anything that would link that data directly to one individual, but there were enough indicators in there that put the name in my head and I couldn’t shake it,” Kurittu said. “When they named him as the prime suspect I was not surprised.”
A handful of individually extorted victims paid a ransom, but when news broke that the entire Vastaamo database had been leaked online, the extortion threats no longer held their sting. However, someone would soon set up a site on the dark web where anyone could search this sensitive data.
Kivimaki stopped using his middle name Julius in favor of his given first name Aleksanteri when he moved abroad several years ago. A Twitter account by that name was verified by Kivimaki’s attorney as his, and through that account he denied being involved in the Vastaamo extortion.
“I believe [the Finnish authorities] brought this to the public in order to influence the decision-making of my old case from my teenage years, which was just processed in the Court of Appeal, both cases are investigated by the same persons,” Kivimaki tweeted on Oct. 28.
Kivimaki is appealing a 2020 district court decision sentencing him to “one year of conditional imprisonment for two counts of fraud committed as a young person, and one of gross fraud, interference with telecommunications as a young person, aggravated data breach as a young person and incitement to fraud as a young person,” according to the Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
“Now in the Court of Appeal, the prosecutor is demanding a harsher punishment for the man, i.e. unconditional imprisonment,” reads the Ilta-Sanomat story. “The prosecutor notes in his complaint that the young man has been committing cybercrimes from Espoo since he was 15 years old, and the actions have had to be painstakingly investigated through international legal aid.”
As described in this Wired story last year, Vastaamo filled an urgent demand for psychological counseling, and it won accolades from Finnish health authorities and others for its services.
“Vastaamo was a private company, but it seemed to operate in the same spirit of tech-enabled ease and accessibility: You booked a therapist with a few clicks, wait times were tolerable, and Finland’s Social Insurance Institution reimbursed a big chunk of the session fee (provided you had a diagnosed mental disorder),” William Ralston wrote for Wired. “The company was run by Ville Tapio, a 39-year-old coder and entrepreneur with sharp eyebrows, slicked-back brown hair, and a heavy jawline. He’d cofounded the company with his parents. They pitched Vastaamo as a humble family-run enterprise committed to improving the mental health of all Finns.”
But for all the good it brought, the healthcare records management system that Vastaamo used relied on little more than a MySQL database that was left dangerously exposed to the web for 16 months, guarded by nothing more than an administrator account with a blank password.
The Finnish daily Iltalehti said Tapio was relieved of his duties as CEO of Vastaamo in October 2020, and that in September, prosecutors brought charges against Tapio for a data protection offense in connection with Vastaamo’s information leak.
“According to Vastaamo, the data breach in Vastaamo’s customer databases took place in November 2018,” Iltalehti reported last month. “According to Vastaamo, Tapio concealed information about the data breach for more than a year and a half.”
