How a 26-year-old hacker breached 165 companies and exposed 100 million people

A hacking operation that began in early 2024 reached far beyond the companies directly targeted. A 26-year-old Canadian man, Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario, has admitted taking part in a campaign that compromised data held by at least 165 customers of a US-based software company. The stolen material ran into billions of records and several terabytes of information, according to US court documents. It included financial details, payroll information, identity documents and records relating to calls and text messages. The attackers then demanded money from victims, while some of the stolen data was also offered for sale online. Moucka pleaded guilty in August 2026 and is due to be sentenced in October.How the hacking operation began and exposed billions of recordsThe conspiracy operated between February and October 2024, according to prosecutors. Moucka and his associates obtained login credentials that allowed them to get into cloud-hosted information belonging to customers of a US software-as-a-service provider.Once inside, they were able to access the computer systems of individual customer organisations. The scale of the material taken was substantial. Investigators say...