Earlier this year the story of the surfer from Devon who foiled the NHS cyber attack gained attention around the world and now, it’s taken a new and crazy twist.
Reports emerged yesterday that cyber security expert, Marcus Hutchins, who goes by the pseudonym Malware Tech, was arrested on Wednesday as he stepped off a plane in Las Vegas. He is accused of being involved in the making of Malware Virus ‘Kronos’, which was used to steal victims banking details from their computers.
“Marcus Hutchins… a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, was arrested in the United States on 2 August, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a grand jury in the Eastern District of Wisconsin returned a six-count indictment against Hutchins for his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan,” the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a recent statement.
“The charges against Hutchins, and for which he was arrested, relate to alleged conduct that occurred between in or around July 2014 and July 2015.”
The release goes on to allege that Marcus created and sold Kronos on various dark web market places, including AlpaBay which was shut down recent after an international cyber crime prevention operation. Many fellow cyber-security experts have expressed their surprise at the news, with his mother saying she though it was “hugely unlikely” that her son would have perpetrated the alleged offences, adding he had spent “enormous amounts of time and even his free time” stopping attacks such as Kronos.
“It looks like the US justice system has made a huge mistake,” said security architect Kevin Beaumont on Twitter, linking to an article which alleges that Kronos was in fact developed in Russia.
“We tried to visit him at [the detention centre], but he was moved before visiting hours,” an anonymous colleague told the BBC on Thursday.
“We’ve not had any contact with him for 18 hours now.”
It’s now bound to be a while before more details emerge, we’ll be sure to update you when they do.
