Most Wanted: Teen Hacker (Most Wanted: Julius Kivimäki)

Mr. Kivimaki came to our attention

in the summer of 2013,

related to a computer intrusion that occurred at the .edu domain.

Julius Kivimaki was just 15 when he hacked Elon Musk.

He took down PlayStation networks around the world

and triggered a U.S. Air Force alert by forcing a passenger jet

to make an emergency landing.

I pointed out that this guy had written on Twitter

that he was getting on a specific flight,

and then somebody else made a bomb threat on Twitter.

Actually, had a recording of the call,

and it was Julius's voice.

He swatted the families of FBI agents.

I think Kivimaki was very immature.

He was upset that this girl didn't want to be friends with him,

and he wanted to make her pay for that.

Alarm bells rang.

The French police realized that they'd accidentally caught

one of Europe's most wanted criminals.

I get asked this a lot.

How do I respond to these charges?

Which is bullshit. What am I supposed to say?

He thought it was fun

and that he enjoyed hurting or seeing other people suffer, if you will.

People think it's a joke, and it isn't.

It's a very serious crime that can lead to significant consequences

for the victims of these cases.

He lived a life of global luxury.

Then he vanished

and became one of Europe's most wanted criminals.

That would be the first time that we have seen her,

you know, a cyber attack have a direct impact

to someone taking their life.

And when my location is the same as his,

I'm gonna (bleep) him.

Kivimaki is a prolific hacker that needs to be stopped.

This is the story of the boy

behind the most dangerous hacking spree

the world has ever seen.

Do I feel that I'm a hacker? I mean, like...

that's the question, I mean,

I suppose somebody can fairly describe me that way, but...

maybe I was.

I don't know, these days,

uh, not only because I'm in prison,

but... (LAUGHS) in general,

it doesn't really occupy much of my mind.

I'm, you know, much more interested in,

you know, things that don't happen on computer screens.

I grew up around the Helsinki capital city area.

I spent all of my early life there.

So, my interest in computers started at a really young age.

Most of my childhood I spent very interested in computers.

It was, you know, mostly stupid kid stuff,

you know, trying to cause drama or just have fun.

Like somebody might be out there spraying graffiti or whatever.

So mostly that, but on the internet.

As a teenager,

Julius Kivimaki quickly made a name for himself

in international hacking circles and the media took notice.

For more than a decade,

his every move has been tracked by Joe Tidy,

one of the world's top cybercrime reporters

and the author of a book on Kivimaki's real life crimes.

I have known this character for 10 years now,

ever since I first came across him when he was a teenager

hacking for a teenage gang called Lizard Squad.

And I've been sort of following his career from afar,

and I've worked really hard

to try and understand who Julius Kivimaki is.

I know the Kivimaki online,

I know Ryan, Ryan C., Ryan Cleary.

Then of course there was this character or this name Zeekill,

which came from his gaming days,

and that seems to be the name that's kind of stuck with him

alongside Ryan for many, many years.

Lots of different names and aliases for this one person.

He's a man of mystery.

School was boring.

Basically everything as they started teaching us,

I could probably do those things, you know.

They start teaching us English, I already...

read and write English, speak English, read books in English.

And they're trying to, you know, slowly start teaching us the basics.

So, it always felt like such a waste of time.

Many hackers start really young,

and they often try to find like-minded individuals.

And the places where you find people like these are these international...

chat groups or Tor networks or different forums.

Sure, you could call it escapism,

but I mean, I suppose that's sort of really most of the things kids do,

whether they're, you know, out playing with their friends

or playing with their friends online.

It's sort of, you know, trying to find something to do

and not be stuck at home doing homework.

And that seems to be where Kivimaki spent big time of his youth.

By learning from others

and wanting to belong to a group of hackers.

It was just looking for something exciting in life,

and as a kid, you know, there's not that much exciting stuff going on.

Allison Nixon is one of the top cyber investigators

in the world.

More than 10 years ago, she infiltrated teenage hacker groups

and locked on to a rising name, Julius Kivimaki.

She's received death threats, been harassed by angry hackers,

and had to go into hiding just to stay safe.

At the time, there was this loosely affiliated network

of hacker communities on different forums and social media,

and they self-identified as "the scene".

Within the scene,

there were many people that exhibited similar tendencies

to Kivimaki to different degrees.

There was this eclectic mix of people

who were on one hand, mainly interested in technology.

They might have been attention seeking,

but they weren't necessarily hateful.

They were just nerds.

On the other end, within the scene, there were also people

that saw technology as a means to an end.

And the actual goal of these people was to seek infamy,

uh, to essentially cause harm.

What we saw with the scene was essentially this transition

from old school hackers

into this current generation of harm-focused hackers.

"First voice message sent Monday,

May 27th at 3:44 a.m."

(SINGING "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP" BY RICK ASTLEY)

"You know the rules and so do I"

It's a classic.

"Never gonna give you up,

"I just wanna tell you How I'm feeling"

"Gotta make you understand"

All right, that's enough of that. But, um...

Yeah, he felt the need to Rickroll me all by himself.

My name is Blair Strater. I go by the online alias root.

And I'm Julius Kivimaki's favourite punching bag.

Julius Kivimaki met American hacker Blair Strader

through an underground network.

What began as a friendship quickly turned toxic

and ended with the two as sworn enemies.

Back then, uh, me and pretty much anyone else who didn't have a life

was hanging out on a website called 4chan.

And through 4chan,

people would just post links to IRC channels

and Hack The Planet is one that I joined.

Me and Zeekill just sort of were in the same place at the same time.

My memory of, of those very, very early years is very fuzzy.

And I usually have to refer to, to records I keep,

but I am told by other people,

"You guys were actually really good friends and you got along."

And I'm like, "I can't remember that."

Zeekill, objectively speaking, is very funny.

And I would hazard a guess

that at the end of the day,

me and him were both there for the same reason.

There's a phrase from that era of the internet

called "do it for the lols".

You do something because it's funny, you think it's gonna be funny,

and I feel like that is probably the biggest draw

that I had to these scenes,

and I think that was likely a very big draw

that Zeekill had to these scenes.

We were bored. We wanted entertainment.

The internet's filled with it.

The FBI took an early interest in hacker groups.

One of the agents who went deepest inside was Ryan Brogan,

a former software developer turned FBI special agent

and a leading expert on the underground scene.

First time I heard of Julius Kivimaki was probably,

uh, when I...

was able to investigate the group called Hack The Planet.

My name is Ryan Brogan.

I'm a special agent with the FBI,

and I've been responsible for investigating cybercrime

as well as other violations for the past 16 years.

The time was probably around 2012.

The group had started to conduct cyber intrusion

into a large range of high-profile targets, or victims, if you will.

The Newark Division itself, we were in a unique position

where we had a high degree of visibility

into this particular group.

Hack The Planet was a,

appeared to be a loosely affiliated group of individuals who came online.

I believe they gamed together,

and then additionally, they would commit

computer intrusions or fraud.

Insofar as their different targets that they had,

there was entities like Educause, MIT,

other government entities as well,

had all experienced computer intrusion

that was a derivative of this particular group.

During the years of Lizard Squad and HTP,

this subculture, essentially, shifted

away from pure technology

and hacking in the old sense,

and more towards causing harm for the sake of causing harm

in the new sense,

and using technology and hacking to accomplish that.

Talking about these groups, Hack The Planet and Lizard Squad,

I don't know.