According to the indictment, Hutchins’ co-defendant advertised the malware for sale on AlphaBay, a darknet marketplace, and sold it two months later. Hutchins, known on Twitter as @MalwareTechBlog, gained a reputation as an “accidental hero” in May for halting the global spread of the WannaCry ransomware attack. But we actually stopped the spread just by registering the domain,” he told the Guardian at the time. The WannaCry malware ended up affecting more than 1m computers, but experts estimate that without Hutchins’ intervention it could have infected 10-15m computers. Hutchins was given a special recognition award at the cybersecurity SC Awards Europe for his role in halting the malware.

Source: The Guardian August 05, 2017 00:32 UTC