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  1. 08-03-2017, 06:17 PM #1
    JohnDoe2
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    Cyber expert who stopped 'WannaCry' attack arrested in U.S. on hacking charges

    #CYBER RISK
    AUGUST 3, 2017 / 10:43 AM / AN HOUR AGO

    Cyber expert who stopped 'WannaCry' attack arrested in U.S. on hacking charges

    Dustin Volz
    3 MIN READ

    SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A cyber security researcher widely credited with helping to neutralize the global "WannaCry" ransomware attack earlier this year has been arrested on unrelated hacking charges, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday.

    Marcus Hutchins, a British-based malware researcher who gained attention for detecting a "kill switch" that effectively disabled the WannaCry worm in May, was detained by the FBI in Las Vegas on Wednesday, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said, just days after he and tens of thousands of hackers descended on the city for the annual Black Hat and Def Con conventions.

    An indictment filed in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin accused Hutchins, also known online as "MalwareTech," of advertising, distributing and profiting from malware code known as "Kronos" that stole online banking credentials and credit card data. Hutchins' alleged activity took place between July 2014 and July 2015, according to the indictment.

    Hutchins, who faces six counts related to Kronos, was indicted along with an unnamed co-defendant on July 12, but the case remained under seal until Thursday, a day after his arrest.

    Kronos malware downloaded from email attachments left victims' systems vulnerable to theft of banking and credit card credentials, which could have been used to siphon money from bank accounts.

    The indictment alleges that the unidentified co-defendant advertised the Kronos malware on AlphaBay, a dark web marketplace that international authorities took offline last month. Investigators said the site allowed anonymous users to facilitate global trade in drugs, firearms, hacking tools and other illicit goods.

    The Justice Department said Kronos was used to steal banking systems credentials in Canada, Germany, Poland, France, the United Kingdom and other countries.

    Within the cyber security community, Hutchins was heralded as a folk hero for his apparent role in stopping the WannaCry attack, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers and caused disruptions at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools in more than 150 countries.

    A Justice Department official said his arrest was unrelated to WannaCry.

    Reuters was unable to immediately reach Hutchins or an attorney representing him.

    Andrew Mabbitt, founder of cyber firm Fidus Information Security, said on Twitter that he was working to obtain a lawyer for Hutchins because he lacked legal representation. Mabbitt did not respond to a request for further comment.

    "I refuse to believe the charges against @MalwareTechBlog," Mabbitt said on Twitter. "He spent his career stopping malware, not writing it."

    Hutchins' arrest was first reported by the security website Motherboard.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1AJ2IC
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  2. 08-03-2017, 06:24 PM #2
    JohnDoe2
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    The hackers behind the WannaCry ransomware attack have finally cashed out

    Headed for the laundry. (EPA/Ritchie B. Tongo)

    WRITTEN BY
    Keith Collins
    August 03, 2017

    It’s been 12 weeks since the WannaCry ransomware attack infected computers across the globe, encrypting their files and charging their owners $300 to $600 for the keys to get them back. In total, the hackers made about $140,000 in bitcoin from the operation, which on May 12 forced emergency rooms in the U.K. to turn away patients, and shut down a Spanish telecommunications company and a Russian cellphone operator.

    Since the attack, that $140,000 sat untouched, spread across the three bitcoin wallets where victims were instructed to send their ransom payments. Few expected the money would ever move out of the accounts, as they were surely watched by law-enforcement agencies around the world. But on Wednesday night, the money began to move.

    A Twitter bot set up by Quartz to watch the bitcoin accounts, which are publicly accessible on the blockchain, picked up the first withdrawals at 11:10pm ET:
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    Those first transactions made up about $70,000, half of the total the accounts held. Five minutes later, there were another three withdrawals:
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    Ten minutes after that, there was a final withdrawal, and all three accounts were completely empty:
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    The money was likely sent through a bitcoin mixer, a process that obscures its trail from bitcoin to hard currency. The process is a sort of laundering operation for digital currency. The general consensus among security experts and government agencies is that North Korea was behind the WannaCry attack, and that the operation was more political than money-driven.

    https://qz.com/1045270/wannacry-upda...00-in-bitcoin/
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