Canada Detains Alleged Snowflake Hacker

The man who allegedly hacked data storage company Snowflake has been arrested in Canada at the request of United States officials, writes Jonathan Greig in The Record. The alleged Snowflake hacker is linked to sizeable breaches at major companies with global implications.

The arrest is related to about 165 data breaches that took place earlier this year, The Record reports, citing reporting by Bloomberg. Hackers are said to have stolen login information to Snowflake employee accounts, affecting a long list of companies that includes AT&T, Ticketmaster, Advance Auto Parts, one large US school district, Neiman Marcus, Santander, and LendingTree.

More than 100 million customers at AT&T and more than 560 million at Ticketmaster had their information compromised, according to the report.

In his article, Greig cites a report from 404Media, an online publication. 404Media said it spoke to the arrested man, and he told the publication that he expected his arrest was imminent and that he had destroyed evidence in the meantime.

Snowflake hired cybersecurity firm Mandiant to investigate the breaches, and according to Snowflake no security issues were found in the company’s platform. Mandiant did find the hackers stole valid credentials dating back to 2020 and used those credentials to log into company accounts.