Canada

When an alleged hacker known as “Waifu” violently threatened her online, cybersecurity researcher Allison Nixon set out to unmask them.

Now Connor Riley Moucka, a 25 year old from Kitchener, Ont., is being held in Canada as he awaits extradition to the U.S. to face multiple criminal charges. U.S. authorities accuse Moucka and his accomplices of hacking into at least 10 organizations and stealing troves of sensitive records like payroll and banking information. By holding stolen data for ransom, they allegedly extorted US$2.5 million in Bitcoin from three of their victims.

In 2024, hiding behind pseudonyms like “Waifu,” Moucka purportedly used Telegram group chats to boast of his alleged crimes and threaten Nixon and her company. Nixon believes Moucka was trying to get her attention to find out what Unit221B knew about him – which she admits wasn’t much at the time. Those threats, however, quickly made him a target for Unit221B and would be a crucial misstep in his undoing.

“He was drawing attention to himself and causing more people to work on his case and causing his case to become the higher priority,” Nixon said. “He couldn’t stop threatening people that weren’t initially working on his case.”