FBI Arrested Researcher Who Found ‘Kill-Switch’ to Stop Wannacry Ransomware

The 22-year-old British security researcher who gained fame for discovering the "kill switch" that stopped the outbreak of the WannaCry ransomware—has been reportedly arrested in the United States after attending the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas.

Marcus Hutchins, operates under the alias MalwareTech on Twitter, was detained by the FBI in the state of Nevada, a friend of Hutchins

confirmed

Motherboard.

At the time of writing, it is unclear why the Internet's 'accidental hero' has been detained by the FBI, but his arrest has sparked an endless debate in the security community.

Hutchins became famous over two months ago when the WannaCry ransomware began hitting businesses, organisations and individuals across the world, and he accidentally halted its global spread by registering a domain name hidden in the malware.

http://ift.tt/2rbOxA5

The domain as mentioned above was responsible for keeping WannaCry ransomware propagating and spreading like a worm, and if the connection to this domain fails, the SMB worm proceeds to infect the system.

Fortunately, Hutchins registered this domain in question and created a sinkhole–tactic researchers use to redirect traffic from the infected machines to a self-controlled system.

Story is in developing...Stay Tune!

from The Hacker News http://ift.tt/2v2N5T9