Remember the 22-year-old who stopped the WannaCry ransomware attack. Some people easily called him an accidental hero but we kind of disagree. Marcus Hutchins who goes by the name of Malware Tech on the internet managed to stop the biggest ransomware attack in the history with some intelligent tinkering and buying a garbled domain name. The domain only cost him $10.69 but soon after he bought it, the affected computers began to connect with the URL, and people could access their files in a few hours time.
Hutchins is a British cyber security researcher who failed his Information Technology course in high school due to hacking accusations. HackerOne rewarded the hacker $10,000 for his contribution to the ransomware solution, but he decided to give it to charity commenting, “I plan on holding a vote to decide which charities will get the majority of the money. The rest will go to buying books/resources for people looking to get into infosec who can’t afford them.”
You would think the man lost $10 only to get $10,000 richer but the money and fame are not all that was brought to Marcus. Like an extremely famous celebrity, Marcus Hutchins was bombarded by the media trying to obtain his personal details.
You might think being famous is really cool but Marcus completely disagrees.
I knew 5 minutes of fame would be horrible but honestly i misjudge just how horrible…. British tabloids are super invasive.
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 20, 2017
And yeah, media’s ethics for respecting people’s privacy? Yes, there are none.
Tabloids here don't care about the story, they care about every detail of the person behind it and will go to extreme lengths to find out.
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 20, 2017
Life online sucks when you want to stay in hiding.
It took them about 2h to find someone who knew me, around 3 days to find me. Once they got a name it was pretty much game over.
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 18, 2017
Some were decent enough to turn up after an invite though.
Bit late, but congratulations to the winners: @AP, who were the only journalists to turn up at my house with an invite 🙂 pic.twitter.com/trC5xMo7ce
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 18, 2017
Who said he did not stay optimistic?
One good thing about all this is I now have a blocklist of shitty journalists so if anything happens again I'll receive far less emails.
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 23, 2017
And he is pretty decent about his fame.
The point I was trying to make is that I didn't try to become famous, I tried to remain anonymous and was dragged into the spotlight.
— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 21, 2017
Marcus has also announced what charities will be getting his reward money.
So far I've decided on 4 charities:
DoctorsWithoutBorders
Great Ormond Street
Charity: Water
Hackers For Charity— Marcus Hutchins (@MalwareTechBlog) May 21, 2017
