The young cybersecurity expert who managed to halt the spread of the WannaCry ransomware¡¯s first wave last week says he plans to donate a substantial monetary reward offered to him to charity. What a gesture!
British man Marcus Hutchins, aka MalwareTech, was responsible for halting the inexorable march of WannaCry on Friday, when he followed clues from the malware¡¯s code and registered a domain name the attackers were using as a kill switch.?
Ever since, his identity has been outed by British media and has been inundated with communications from the media, the cybersecurity world and more. He¡¯s now even been offered a $10,000 by HackerOne, a platform for cybersecurity professionals to report potential security flaws in exchange for bounty rewards. However, Hutchins says he doesn¡¯t want to take the money, and no instead plans to donate the amount to charity
He has now been offered a $10,000 reward for his efforts ¡ª but he says he doesn't want it. ¡°I plan on holding a vote to decide which charities will get the majority of the money,¡± he wrote on Twitter.
WannaCry generated panic over the weekend when it began shutting hundreds of thousands of users out of their computers, with even private corporations and government services being affected across the world. Over 250,000 systems were infected before Hutchins stumbled upon the kill switch. While it didn¡¯t completely stop the malware¡¯s effects, it did buy cybersecurity professionals time to come up with a plan of action. Which is something we all need to be thankful for, considering the next wave of WannaCry is already here (sans kill switch) and infecting more computers. How it progresses from here, is up to people like Hutchins, the silent superheroes in LED-lit rooms, hard at work unravelling the malware¡¯s code.