Researcher Who Helped Stop WannaCry Arrested By FBI
Monday, August 7th, 2017
Marcus Hutchins, a British Cyber Security Researcher who helped stop the WannaCry ransomware cyberattack, has been arrested by the FBI. The Department Of Justice released an indictment accusing the 23-year-old of creating the Kronos (a banking Trojan) in 2015. After traveling to the US for a cyber security conference, the FBI arrested the “accidental hero.”
Hutchins faces up to forty years in prison if convicted.
According to the BBC, it’s Hutchins job to investigate malware like Kronos and ransomware like WannaCry. Many of his fellow security researchers think that US authorities have made a mistake in arresting Hutchins. According to the Guardian, a Proofpoint security researcher was quoted as saying “This could very easily be the FBI mistaking legitimate research activity with being in control of Kronos infrastructure… Lots of researchers like to log in to crimeware tools and interfaces and play around.” He went on to say, “sometimes you have to at least pretend to be selling something interesting to get people to trust you.”