Canadian authorities say they arrested hacker linked to Snowflake information breaches

A hacker suspected of involvement in a sequence of enormous Snowflake-related hacks has been arrested in Canada, according to native authorities.

Ian McLeod, a spokesperson for the Canadian Division of Justice, instructed TechCrunch in an e mail that, “following a request by the US, Alexander Moucka (a.okay.a. Connor Moucka) was arrested on a provisional arrest warrant on Wednesday October 30, 2024.”

For months, hackers stole inside information from dozens of companies, along with AT&T, Ticketmaster, Superior Auto Elements, and spherical 165 completely different firm prospects who use Snowflake, a company that provides cloud suppliers and information analysis to completely different companies. The hackers stole giant portions of sometimes personally identifiable and delicate firm information that companies saved in Snowflake, partially via the usage of passwords stolen from employee laptop methods with malware. On account of Snowflake did not require its prospects to utilize multi-factor authentication on their accounts, the hackers have been able to break in and steal big volumes of knowledge using merely the employee passwords.

The hacker, who used the monikers Waifu and Judische, instructed 404 Media last month that they’ve been anticipating to be arrested rapidly. 404 Media reported Moucka’s arrest on Monday.

“I’ve destroyed a wide range of proof and correctly poisoned the stuff I can’t destroy so when/if it does happen it’s merely conspiracy which I can bond out and beat,” Judische, the hacker who claimed the Snowflake hacks, instructed the neutral info website online last month.

McLeod talked about that Moucka appeared in courtroom on October 30 and “his case was adjourned to Tuesday November 5, 2024.” McLeod declined to the touch upon a doable extradition to the US.

Google spokesperson Mark Karayan talked about Moucka was the hacker accountable for the Snowflake breaches.

“Collectively together with his co-conspirator, John Binns, having been arrested by Turkish authorities earlier this 12 months as correctly, due to this every threat actors accountable for this advertising marketing campaign in the mean time are lastly in custody,” Karayan talked about, referring to the arrest of the 21-year-old American hacker who instructed The Wall Avenue Journal that he was behind the AT&T hack.

Austin Larsen, a senior threat analyst at Google’s cybersecurity company Mandiant, who has been investigating the Snowflake hacks, talked about that “Alexander ‘Connor’ Moucka has confirmed to be a few of the consequential threat actors of 2024.”

“This arrest serves as a deterrent to cybercriminals and reinforces that their actions have extreme penalties,” talked about Larsen.

The U.S. Division of Justice did not reply to a request for comment.

This story has been updated to include statements from Google.