Canadian Hacker Pleads Guilty in Massive Snowflake Data Breach and Extortion Case

Connor Riley Moucka, a 26-year-old from Kitchener, Ontario, pleaded guilty to a hacking conspiracy that compromised over 165 organizations using Snowflake's cloud services. The attacks occurred between February and October 2024, exploiting accounts without multi-factor authentication (MFA) to steal billions of sensitive records. Moucka and his co-conspirators extorted victims for more than $2.5 million, threatening to publish stolen data online. The breach affected major companies, including AT&T and Ticketmaster, impacting an estimated 100 million individuals. Moucka faces a minimum of two years and a maximum of 32 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for October 27, 2026. Snowflake has since mandated MFA for all customer accounts to enhance security.

Key Points: • Connor Moucka pleaded guilty to hacking and extortion involving over 165 organizations. • The breach exploited accounts lacking multi-factor authentication, leading to massive data theft. • Victims suffered over $9.5 million in losses, affecting around 100 million individuals.