Ontario man allegedly behind major data hack agrees to U.S. extradition

A Kitchener, Ont. man, accused in a major data hack, has decided not to oppose his extradition.

A Kitchener, Ont. man, accused of being behind a massive data hack that impacted several large international companies, has agreed to be extradited to the United States.

During a brief court appearance on Friday, Connor Moucka signed a consent to surrender, acknowledging that by doing so he was giving up his right to make submissions as to why he should not be extradited.

The 25-year-old was arrested in October 2024 at a home in Kitchener’s Stanley Park neighbourhood, where he was living at the time.

Court documents detailed the allegations made against Moucka and his co-accused, John Erin Binns, who was believed to be living in Türkiye.

The U.S. court indictment states Moucka and Binns devised and executed computer hacking and wire fraud schemes to hack into the protected computer networks of at least 10 organizations and steal sensitive information.

It is also alleged they successfully extorted about $2.5 million from at least three of the victims who paid the ransoms. Offers were also posted online to sell the stolen data for millions of dollars.

Moucka is charged with conspiracy, computer fraud and abuse, extortion in relation to computer fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

While no companies were named in the court documents, experts agree the details match a hack that happened in 2024 involving customers of Snowflake, a cloud-based data storage company based in the U.S. It’s believed hackers stole credentials to access accounts from a third-party company used to manage the data.

AT&T, Live Nation, Ticketmaster and Advance Auto Parts were among the companies that admitted they were affected by the data breach.

Experts called it one of the biggest ever cybersecurity breaches.