The story of a guy who single-handedly destroyed a dangerous computer virus (7 photos)

In 2017, tens of thousands of computers were infected with the sophisticated WannaCry virus. It infected gadgets around the world, encrypting data on the hard drive. The virus demanded that $300 be transferred to certain accounts for decryption.





The creators of the virus earned at least 70 thousand dollars until 22-year-old Marcus Hutchins from the UK, alone, stopped the spread of WannaCry, which was proceeding by leaps and bounds.



WannaCry

The young man studied the virus code and learned that for some reason, even before starting work, it requests a specific domain. The malware checked whether the domain was registered and began encrypting files only if the domain name was free. Hutchins figured out how WannaCry worked and bought the domain name for just ten pounds. The cyber attack of the virus mainly affected the public sector, corporations and the IT field.





Marcus Hutchins

Who was Marcus? He grew up on a farm, but since childhood he had a special relationship with computers. Already at the age of 13, he independently assembled his first PC and just a year later he wrote the first malware. At the age of 15, the teenager controlled a botnet (of course, in secret from everyone) of more than eight thousand computers.



Writing malware was simply a way for Marcus to develop his skills. But his skills were noticed by more professional “colleagues”. Hacker Vinny began paying Hutchins to develop hacking software so that he could later sell it online. Marcus never wondered who his customers were, but he understood that his skills were highly valued in this environment.

Of course, all this was completely illegal. Vinny had enough ways to put pressure on Marcus and forced him to create the Kronos banking Trojan, which sold for thousands of dollars in 2014-2015. A little later, the young hacker was also accused of creating the UPAS Kit virus - this software unauthorizedly collected personal data of users.



In a court

But let's go back to 2017. Marcus stopped the virus in May, and at the end of June he was invited to a security conference in Las Vegas. He was having a good time, having fun, and was about to fly home when police detained him at the Las Vegas airport on the charges described in the previous paragraph. By the way, Hutchins has not been creating malware for a long time.

Already on July 11, 2017, charges were filed against Marcus Hutchins. At that time, he was already very famous not only in the cyber environment, but also among ordinary people, since journalists managed to find out who exactly saved computers from the WannaCry attack.



Marcus with the FBI

Marcus could not be charged with distributing and selling Kronos (this was done by another person who was also detained by the police), and the creation of malware itself is not a serious crime. Plus, the authorities were, in principle, very loyal to the young man who stopped the virus attacking the computers of government agencies. With all that said, he only received one year of probation.



As a result, Marcus Hutchins remained to live in Los Angeles and began to work what he always wanted - a researcher in the field of cybersecurity. The young man also runs his own blog, where he posts tutorials, training videos and hosts podcasts about the world of hackers, from which he has long since left.

The former criminal became what are called "white hat hackers."