Hackere who stopped WannaCry Charged With Writing Banking Malware

[Disir]

Just three short months ago, security researcher Marcus Hutchins entered the pantheon of hacker heroes for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack that ripped through the internet and paralyzed hundreds of thousands of computers. Now he's been arrested and charged with involvement in another mass hacking scheme—this time on the wrong side.

Yesterday authorities detained 22-year-old Hutchins after the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas as he attempted to fly home to the UK, where he works as a researcher for the security firm Kryptos Logic. Upon his arrest, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Hutchins, charging that he created the Kronos banking trojan, a widespread piece of malware used to steal banking credentials for fraud. He's accused of intentionally creating that banking malware for criminal use, as well as being part of a conspiracy to sell it for $3,000 between 2014 and 2015 on cybercrime market sites such as the now-defunct AlphaBay dark web market.

But the short, eight-page indictment against Hutchins, a rising star in the hacker world, has already raised questions and skepticism in both legal and cybersecurity circles. Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has written extensively about cybersecurity and hacking cases, says that based on the indictment alone, the charges look like "a stretch." Although the indictment claims Hutchins wrote the Kronos malware, nothing in the document illustrates that Hutchins possessed actual intent for the malware he allegedly created to be used in the criminal "conspiracy" he's accused of."It’s not a crime to create malware. It’s not a crime to sell malware. It’s a crime to sell malware with the intent to further someone else’s crime." Kerr says. "This story alone doesn’t really fit. There's got to be more to it, or it’s going to run into legal problems."

Hacker Who Stopped WannaCry Charged With Writing Banking Malware

Here is the indictment for those who won't read the rest of the article.
MalwareTechBlog Indictment

 

[martybegan]

Just three short months ago, security researcher Marcus Hutchins entered the pantheon of hacker heroes for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack that ripped through the internet and paralyzed hundreds of thousands of computers. Now he's been arrested and charged with involvement in another mass hacking scheme—this time on the wrong side.

Yesterday authorities detained 22-year-old Hutchins after the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas as he attempted to fly home to the UK, where he works as a researcher for the security firm Kryptos Logic. Upon his arrest, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Hutchins, charging that he created the Kronos banking trojan, a widespread piece of malware used to steal banking credentials for fraud. He's accused of intentionally creating that banking malware for criminal use, as well as being part of a conspiracy to sell it for $3,000 between 2014 and 2015 on cybercrime market sites such as the now-defunct AlphaBay dark web market.

But the short, eight-page indictment against Hutchins, a rising star in the hacker world, has already raised questions and skepticism in both legal and cybersecurity circles. Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has written extensively about cybersecurity and hacking cases, says that based on the indictment alone, the charges look like "a stretch." Although the indictment claims Hutchins wrote the Kronos malware, nothing in the document illustrates that Hutchins possessed actual intent for the malware he allegedly created to be used in the criminal "conspiracy" he's accused of."It’s not a crime to create malware. It’s not a crime to sell malware. It’s a crime to sell malware with the intent to further someone else’s crime." Kerr says. "This story alone doesn’t really fit. There's got to be more to it, or it’s going to run into legal problems."

Hacker Who Stopped WannaCry Charged With Writing Banking Malware

Here is the indictment for those who won't read the rest of the article.
MalwareTechBlog Indictment

Sooner or later there was going to be a case like this, I surprised it took this long.

They are going to have a hard time proving intent to commit a crime if he simply made it and then someone took it from him an used it maliciously.

I wonder if the comparison to biological diseases could be apt here. Maybe they need to make new laws that threat malware and virus code like infectious materials are treated.

 

[waltky]

No. Korea likely behind Wannacry attack...

Britain Says North Korea Was Likely Behind WannaCry Attack That Hit Hospitals
October 27, 2017 - The WannaCry ransomware attack that crippled Britain's National Health Service and hit thousands of computers around the world in May was almost certainly carried out by North Korea, says U.K. Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace.

The British government is "as sure as possible" that Kim Jong Un's pariah state launched the attack, Wallace told BBC Radio 4. "This attack, we believe quite trongly that it came from a foreign state," Wallace said. "It is widely believed in the community and across a number of countries that North Korea [took on] this role."

Wallace's remarks come two weeks after Microsoft President Brad Smith also blamed the North Korean regime. "I think at this point that all observers in the know have concluded that WannaCry was caused by North Korea using cyber tools or weapons that were stolen from the National Security Agency in the United States," Smith said. As we reported in May, "The WannaCry software has locked thousands of computers in more than 150 countries. Users are confronted with a screen demanding a $300 payment to restore their files."

Within days of the attack, fingers began to point at North Korea, which has sought to find ways to import currency in the face of international sanctions. Computer security experts noted that the ransomware had lines of code that are identical to work by hackers known as the Lazarus Group, which has been linked to North Korea. In addition to naming North Korea, Microsoft's Smith has criticized U.S. agencies for "stockpiling" computer system vulnerabilities, saying that hacking methods that governments collect are increasingly falling into the hands of criminals.

Smith seemed to confirm the version of events laid out in our report in May: "The malware behind WannaCry (also called WannaCrypt, Wana Decryptor or WCry) was reported to have been stolen from the NSA in April. And while Microsoft said it had already released a security update to patch the vulnerability one month earlier, the sequence of events fed speculation that the NSA hadn't told the U.S. tech giant about the security risk until after it had been stolen."

Britain Says North Korea Was Likely Behind WannaCry Attack That Hit Hospitals