Softpedia yesterday reported on a potentially serious hack in Denmark last year. “The incidents are currently being investigated but two suspects have already been identified. One of them is a Danish man, and the other one is an individual from Sweden who’s currently being detained in Sweden.”

The Dane is unnamed; but the Swede is Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the original founders of The Pirate Bay. Svartholm is currently awaiting the verdict in a separate case just completed in Sweden where he was accused of hacking Logica, a Swedish IT company that worked with the Swedish tax authorities. Svartholm was detained in Cambodia last year and extradited to Sweden. This was originally to serve a sentence for copyright infringement; but once in Sweden he was subsequently charged with the Logica hack.

The Danish hack bears similarities to the Logica incident. It involved CSC, a Danish IT company that works with the Danish government. Last week the Danish Police issued a statement (in Danish). Between April and August 2012, hackers downloaded a large number of files from CSC mainframes, including “information from police driving records, including Social Security numbers, and information on wanted persons in the Schengen registers.” The same systems also house records from the Danish tax authorities, social security and the Danish Modernization Agency. The police do not believe these records were affected, but do not exclude the possibility.

The police statement goes on to say, “A Swedish citizen is suspected in the case. He is currently in custody in Sweden in another case, and Danish police have now requested his extradition.” There is no doubt that this man is Gottfrid Svartholm. However, the possibility that Logica and CSC are just the tip of the iceberg has now been raised. Speaking to Computerworld Denmark, Peter Kruse (CTO of Danish CSIS Security Group) thinks there is more to come once the authorities dig deeper into the evidence so far seized. Much of the evidence against Svartholm in Sweden was found on his laptop seized when he was detained in Cambodia.

Kruse believes that the CSC hack was a direct result of the Logica hack. Given the multi-host capability of mainframes, with several customers on the same system, Computerworld suggests it is likely that companies other than Logica (CGI), Nordea and all police data on CSC's mainframe systems will have been affected. It hints that Kruse knows more than he can disclose. Nevertheless he says it is unlikely that “the group has only attacked targets in Denmark and Sweden.”

Kruse suggests that Svartholm is thought to be the ‘strategic commander’ of a hacking group centered around the Pirate Bay, and that the theft of huge amounts of government data records from Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere was intended as a bargaining chip between the Pirate Bay and the authorities – primarily the Swedish government. "Extortion is perhaps a strong word,” said Kruse, “but the fact is that personal [data] has been downloaded and the data is still in the IT criminals' custody.”