Kivimäki walks free during appeal over Vastaamo data breach

Kivimäki walks free during appeal over Vastaamo data breach, a report dated 11 September 2025, notes that Aleksanteri Kivimäki, convicted of thousands of cybercrimes linked to the Vastaamo data breach, has been released from custody by the Helsinki Court of Appeal. The Helsinki Times reports that the decision followed two days of testimony from Kivimäki, who denied all charges, and that the court cited his prolonged pretrial detention as the reason for release, with his trial set to continue through November.

The court stated that further detention was not justified after the completion of Kivimäki’s hearing. The article adds that the Court of Appeal’s decision does not overturn the earlier ruling by the district court, which in April 2024 sentenced Kivimäki to six years and three months in prison for aggravated data breach, 20 counts of aggravated extortion, over 20,000 attempted extortions, and over 9,000 aggravated violations of personal privacy, all connected to the 2018 hacking of Vastaamo’s database. Read more at The Helsinki Times.