Hacker suspected in massive Ticketmaster, AT&T breaches arrested in Canada

Authorities in Canada have arrested a man suspected of stealing information from around 165 companies using Snowflake’s cloud storage services, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and 404 Media.

In a statement to The Verge, Canada Department of Justice spokesperson Ian McLeod confirmed that authorities arrested Alexander “Connor” Moucka on October 30th following a request from the US government. “He appeared in court later that afternoon and his case was adjourned to Tuesday November 5, 2024,” McLeod said. “As extradition requests are considered confidential state-to-state communications, we cannot comment further on this case.”

In May, Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation revealed that it had suffered a massive data breach after alleged customer information was posted for sale on hacking forums. However, that was only the first of many breaches to come to light, with other companies with ties to Snowflake, including AT&T, Santander Bank, Advanced Auto Parts, and Lending Tree subsidiary Quote Wizard later disclosing security incidents affecting millions of customers.

Following an investigation, the Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant found that a “financially motivated threat actor” had stolen a “significant volume of data” from about 165 Snowflake customers using compromised login credentials. It didn’t find any evidence that Snowflake itself was breached.

Update, November 5th: Added a statement from the Canada Department of Justice.